Colombia, located at the confluence of Central and South America, is home to nearly 10 percent of the planet's biodiversity. Its ecosystems range from the Andean highlands to the vast plains and Amazon rainforests. Among its symbolic species are dozens of representatives of the genus Spelecia: Playful looking plants commonly called freejohns. Its rosettes of luscious, hairy leaves are crowned by thick, spongy trunks that catch the mist that drifts over the unique and delicate Andean highland wetlands called páramos.
Wet swamps, one of fastest growing ecosystems in the world contrast with the arid climate of the rest of the Andes. Although they cover only 1.7 percent of Colombia's territory, they provide the country with 85 percent of its drinking water, much of which is stored in the trunks of freylejons during the water cycle and then released into lakes and rivers. All that moisture has historically made wetlands resistant to ignition and the spread of wildfires.
But this year, an unprecedented wildfire season has led to páramo fires across Colombia. A forest fire has burned more than 100 acres of freilejones in Berlin's Páramo alone, in northeastern Colombia. Since the beginning of 2024, more than 500 fires have occurred across the country, destroying at least 42,000 acres of forests and grasslands and covering Colombia's capital Bogota in a cloud of fire. polluting smoke.
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Colombia's wildfire season typically coincides with the dry season, which runs from December to March, and the number of fires and area burned varies from year to year. A study published in 2022 in the journal Fire analyzed data from 2000 to 2020 and concluded that in Colombia registered 100 to 300 forest fires in a typical January; This year marks the first time there have been more than 500 fires since systematic data collection began in the country in 1998. Initially, almost all of the fires this year were caused by people.the heat and drought caused by the climate made them worse than usual.
Especially in fragile Paramos, “the fire regime has changed,” says Mauricio Aguilar Garavito, an ecologist specializing in wildfires at the Pontifical University of Javeriana in Colombia. Analysis of layers of ancient sediments shows that over the past 10,000 years, the páramos in the northern Andes has burned about once every 100 to 1,000 years. “Now,” says Aguilar Garavito, “fires happen every two to ten years.”
January 2024 – the middle of the southern summer – was Colombia's hottest in 30 years, according to Ghisliana Echeverri Prieto, director of Colombia's Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Research, at a press conference late last month. The temperature has reached all time record highs It's 44 degrees Celsius (111 degrees Fahrenheit) in Honda, a small city in central Colombia surrounded by four páramo ecosystems.
This heat is exacerbating a historic drought across the region as warmer temperatures cause the air to absorb more moisture from plants. Drier plant matter, especially debris on the forest floor, ignites more easily. This also causes wildfires to burn brighter and spread faster.
The current heat and drought may be related to both climate change and the cyclical weather pattern known as El Niño. Credit: LUIS ACOSTA/AFP via Getty Images
The current heat and drought may be related to both climate change and cyclical weather pattern known as El Niñowhich has warmer than normal waters in the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean. The heat these waters release into the atmosphere causes a cascade of changes in weather patterns around the world. Increasing extreme heat is one sign of climate change, and traces of global warming have been found in numerous heat waves, including those that brought… summer temperatures in parts of South America last winter.
A study published in late January by the World Weather Attribution (WWA) research consortium also concludes that drought which currently affects the entire Amazon basin With mainly due to climate changewith some strengthening of El Niño. The researchers found that, taking into account both low rainfall and high evaporation rates, drought became 30 times more likely due to climate change.
Wildfires caused by drought, rising temperatures and El Niño are also being felt in the Chilean province of Valparaiso, where the devastating and damaging effects deadly fires used up 64,000 acres th 14,000 houses and have killed more than 131 people since February 2. But while in Colombia El Niño affects fires mainly due to the drier weather it brings, in Chile it is due to higher temperatures, explains Raúl Cordero Carrasco, a climatologist and mechanical engineer at the University of Santiago de Chile.
In a typical January, Colombia experiences between 100 and 300 wildfires; This year marks the first time there have been more than 500 fires since the country began systematically collecting data in 1998. Photo: Diego Cuevas/Getty Images
The fire risk is exacerbated by “the degradation of Colombian ecosystems,” says Aguilar Garavito. The forests of Oriental Cerros, a mountain range east of Bogotá, contain several invasive and fire-prone plant species such as eucalyptus and El Pinus OOKARPApine tree native to Mexico and Central America. Fallen leaves and pine needles cover the understory of these dense mountain forests, where the material is turned into firewood by the high temperatures and dry air.
Aguilar Garavito argues that the country's “poor fire management” also contributed to the wildfires in Colombia. As in the US, authorities have focused on fire suppression rather than an integrated management strategy that uses prescribed burning, which can help reduce the amount of fuel available for wildfires.
While recent rains have helped firefighters contain some fires, even warmer temperatures are expected in the coming months and will likely persist until the spring rainy season begins, Echeverri Prieto said during a news conference.
While recent rains have helped firefighters contain some fires, even warmer temperatures are expected in the coming months and are likely to persist until the spring monsoon season begins. Credit: Christian Bayona/Long Visual Press/Alamy Live News
Looking to the future, Aguilar Garavito states that wildfires in Páramos are likely to become more frequent and severe in the coming decades. A 2018 master's thesis by Manuela Rueda Trujillo, then at the National University of Colombia in Medellin, found that Colombia's páramos they became drier since the end of the last ice age. A study published in PLOS ONE in 2019 found that this trend intensified by anthropogenic climate change in recent decades and that the Andean páramos is expected to become even drier in the coming decades. A 2022 study conducted by Gwendolyn Peyre of the Universidad des Andes in Colombia and published in the journal Boundaries of ecology and evolution, found that 10 percent of paramoendemic species “They could become extinct by 2070“
“Páramos are special ecosystems because of their limited distribution, hydrological functioning and the endemic species they contain, but they are also extremely fragile,” says Rueda Trujillo, now a doctoral student at Leiden University in the Netherlands. “Taking into account these more intense, frequent and longer-lasting long-term fires, they undoubtedly threaten the conservation of the biodiversity of the páramos – not just the frailejones – as well as their hydrological functioning.”
Of the charred remains of these unique ecosystems, she said, “it’s really sad to see what’s left behind after the fires.”
This article also available in English.
