Aim: Climate change is transforming mountain summit plant communities worldwide, but we know little about such changes in the High Andes. Understanding large‐scale patterns of vegetation changes across the Andes, and the factors driving these changes, is fundamental to predicting the effects of global warming. We assessed trends in vegetation cover, species richness (SR) and community‐level thermal niches (CTN) and tested whether they are explained by summits' climatic conditions and soil temperature trends.Location: High Andes.Time period: Between 2011/2012 and 2017/2019.Major taxa studied: Vascular plants.Methods: Using permanent vegetation plots placed on 45 mountain summits and soil temperature loggers situated along a ~6800 km N‐S gradient, we measured species and their relative percentage cover and estimated CTN in two surveys (intervals between 5 and 8 years). We then estimated the annual rate of changes for the three variables and used generalized linear models to assess their relationship with annual precipitation, the minimum air temperatures of each summit and rates of change in the locally recorded soil temperatures.Results: Over time, there was an average loss of vegetation cover (mean = −0.26%/yr), and a gain in SR across summits (mean = 0.38 species m²/yr), but most summits had significant increases in SR and vegetation cover. Changes in SR were positively related to minimum air temperature and soil temperature rate of change. Most plant communities experienced shifts in their composition by including greater abundances of species with broader thermal niches and higher optima. However, the measured changes in soil temperature did not explain the observed changes in CTN.Main conclusions: High Andean vegetation is changing in cover and SR and is shifting towards species with wider thermal niche breadths. The weak relationship with soil temperature trends could have resulted from the short study period that only marginally captures changes in vegetation through time.

Across the Andes, a critical challenge for mountain socioecological systems is securing water for future generations. Pastoral communities are especially vulnerable because their livelihood practices are often unseen or perceived as a threat to natural resource conservation. In addition to the challenges of climate change, socioeconomic and political processes complicate the drivers of pasture degradation and sustainable water management. Often overlooked systems in assessments of Andean water towers are bofedales (high-altitude peat wetlands), which are critical to supporting mountain pastoral livelihoods. While “natural” azonal mountain peatland and humid meadow development occurs across the Andes, we posit that bofedales are sociohydrological systems created through pastoral management practices over generations. Drawing on the results of applied research on bofedales across the Andes and a literature review of published papers, we present a conceptual reframing of bofedal typologies and change analysis, which prioritizes the role of pastoralists in interdisciplinary research and comparative assessments of land-use and land-cover change in Andean highland regions. We identified key socioecological challenges to sustainable bofedal management, related to herder decision-making and articulated within broader socioeconomic processes. Reframing bofedales as sociohydrological constructs permits the identification of actionable knowledge and the support of water conservation practices applied by pastoralists across Andean water tower regions. If Andean pastoralists are recognized as stewards of sociohydrological systems that are critical to water towers, rather than perceived as threats to natural resources, bofedal conservation planning may be prioritized and locally supported.