Changing Soils in Colombia's Páramo Landscapes Will Hit the Country's Rivers and Cities

The páramo, the iconic alpine meadow landscape of the Andes, continue to be impacted by changes in land use, with downstream consequences for the rivers and cities of Colombia, according to a study co-authored by a soil expert from the University of the Valley (Univalle).

In a paper, researchers from Colombian and British institutions showed a change in the use of the landscape, also changes the composition of the soil, in turn, changing the buffering effect, that is, the capacity of the soil to store and regulate water.

“The paramos work like kitchen sponges, they absorb much more water than their weight,” explained Martha Constanza Daza Torres, a Professor at the School of Engineering of Natural Resources and the Environment (EIDENAR) of the Faculty of Engineering of Univalle.

Portal photo: Professor Daza in the Agricultural Water and Soil Laboratory - LASA of Univalle. Credit: Andrew James/NCC-FI/Univalle

The Living Sponge

"I have dedicated my entire professional life to the study of soils... I worked with soils of páramos de Sumapaz close to the municipality of Fusagasugá, one of the largest in the country,” stated Professor Daza, adding that several rivers of the Orinoquia basin have their source there, feeding the large rivers found in eastern Colombia.

The paramos produce water for urban use, irrigation, and hydroelectric power generation, and the soils and vegetation of the paramos provide efficient forms of carbon storage and sequestration, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Bogotá, the capital of Colombia, and Quito, the capital of Ecuador, obtain most of their water from paramo ecosystems.

Professor Daza also explained that the soils and the botanical life of the paramos also play a key role in regulating water flows through their storage capacity in both dry and rainy seasons.

"Without vegetation, in winter the water falls, it is not retained and the rivers overflow... and when it is summer, the rivers dry up," Professor Daza said.

Photo: The Univalle Agricultural Water and Soil Laboratory - LASA. Credit: Andrew James/NCC-FI/Univalle

Damaged Soils Lead to Big Changes  

Professor Daza says many students, after learning about the paramó, ask “Why do people go through the paramó and destroy them?"

She explains to them that it is a very complicated story: the páramo begin to change significantly in the 1960s and 1970s in Colombia, when there was a public policy to expand the agricultural frontier.

"The poorest people went up the mountain until they reached the paramó," said Professor Daza, adding that although the paramó should be dedicated to conservation, there is currently production of crops there such as potatoes and onions, with livestock grazing as well.

“The soils of the páramo are very fragile, they are damaged if disturbed or compacted,” explained Professor Daza, adding that when cattle ranching in particular compacts them, the soil loses its ability to store carbon and water.

In the paper “Influence of land use on hydro-physical soil properties of Andean paramos ´ and its effect on streamflow buffering,” which was published in the international journal CATENA in 2021, the researchers discovered that changes in land use impact on the soil and therefore its physical properties.

Professor Daza explained that the long-term goal is for the knowledge to help work with agricultural communities already living in paramó areas to manage their livestock and crops with less negative impacts.

"For example, they could put their cattle in fenced paddocks and rotate them, to give the soil more time to recover," she said.

Leer más de la EIDENAR: Cómo la ingeniería está ayudando comunidades 

International Páramo Research 

The paramó is an ecosystem with global significance, so the Colombian researchers were looking for collaborators from other parts of the world.

One of the co-authors of the paper, Professor Wouter Buytaert from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Imperial College in London, UK, explained that he got involved because of his experience in other parts of the Andean region.

“The group got in touch with me because of my track record of very similar research in sites in Ecuador," Profesor Buytaert said "The main relation is the similar type of ecosystem (paramo), which covers the upper regions of the Andes of Ecuador and Colombia.”  

Professor Daza said that it can be difficult to publish in well-known journals with content specific to Colombia. 

"There are evaluators who said that there are only paramó in Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia," Professor Daza explained.

Translating the article into English was also key, but luckily one of the researchers did her PhD in England and she translated the paper into English.

Professor Buytaert said high altitude wetlands play a key role in the water cycle of mountain regions, which are important water supply areas for millions of people around the world.

“High-altitudinal wetlands play a key role in the water cycle of mountain regions, which are important water supply areas for millions of people worldwide... so the results are relevant for many other regions in the world, including the rest of the Andes and the Himalayas,” the professor said, adding that there are many advantages to collaborating internationally.

“In this case, I think that it is a combination of our knowledge of the natural processes of that specific ecosystem, as well as our broader knowledge of relevant scientific analysis methods and experience in publishing. But it also simply shows the global nature of reseach, and how this helps bringing together complementary expertise,” said Profesor Buytaert.

In addition to Univalle and Imperial College, the other collaborators were iMHEA (Regional Initiative for Hydrological Monitoring of Andean Ecosystems) in Lima Peru; iiasur (Institute for Applied Sustainability Research) in Quito, Ecuador and the Universidad Industrial de Santander In Bucaramanga, Colombia. (which financed the work). 

If you would like to contact the researchers or learn more about the project, please write to us at the Communications Office of the Faculty of Engineering: comunicaingenieria(at)correounivalle.edu.co.

Banner photo: Páramo de Berlín located in the Santurbán complex, where the work published in the paper was done. Credit: Viviana Gomez