The paramo ecosystem is vital for biodiversity conservation and water regulation. Despite fire being a known disturbance agent in this ecosystem, little is known about the frequency and trends in these high-elevation landscapes. To address this knowledge gap, we generated a novel burned area database, the Paramo Fire Atlas, spanning from 1985 to 2022 at 30 m resolution, quantifying the fire’s impacts on the Paramo ecosystem across Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Peru. Using the complete Landsat archive, our database reveals that approximately 6370 km² has been affected by fires over 37 years, representing 15% of the total paramo area. Comparing these findings with estimates from the widely used MODIS MCD64 burned area product, we found that MODIS detected only 989 km² of burned area. This represents only one-fourth of the burned area detected by the Paramo Fire Atlas. This significant underestimation by MODIS underscores the limitations of existing data sources in assessing the fire impacts of this complex ecosystem. Contrary to the prevailing notion of increasing fire frequency, our analysis shows a significant decrease in burnt areas across the Colombia paramos, contrasting with heterogeneous trends observed in Ecuador and Peru and a recent peak in fire occurrence in Venezuela. While fires have largely disappeared from certain paramos, others exhibit varying degrees of change. These findings raise important questions about the role of fire disturbances in shaping the ecological functioning of the paramo and the future dynamics of fire in the paramo ecosystem under ongoing global climate change and socio-economical dynamics.

Understanding and mapping anthropogenic threats on species distributions is a crucial task in conservation science to identify priority areas and propose appropriate conservation strategies. Yet, there is a big challenge to quantify how these threats are associated with species distribution patterns at multiple temporal scales. For birds, existing national and global analyses have mostly focused on forest specialists and they tend to consider only one time period. Here, we evaluated spatial and temporal changes in human footprint within the distributions of Colombian birds from 1970 to 2018, and projected them into 2030. We show that widespread increases in human footprint were common within the distribution of terrestrial birds. Endemic and threatened birds have been disproportionately affected by past increases in human footprint within their distribution, and this trend will continue into the future. Several areas harboring high diversity of forest-specialists remained relatively intact up to 2018. However, our predictions show significantly higher and faster (>2% annual change) levels of transformation within these areas by 2030. Importantly, our results suggest that non-forest birds could be experiencing habitat quality declines that are just as significant as those shown for forest birds. Our results show that mitigating negative anthropogenic effects on bird habitats in Colombia requires an array of conservation strategies that range from strict habitat protection to mixed management. These analyses can serve as inputs in conservation decision tools that consider spatiotemporal variation of anthropic threats under multiple scenarios of change.

The maintenance of biodiversity and the capacity of natural systems to provide goods and services for people is affected on different levels by the intensity of human activities on ecosystems. In this study, we apply a Legacy-adjusted Human Footprint Index (LHFI) to evaluate the spatiotemporal variation of anthropic impact in Colombia in 1970, 1990, 2000 and 2015. We identified hotspots of change in LHFI and we evaluated the intensity of anthropic pressures in natural regions and ecosystems. We found that LHFI in Colombia increased between 1970 and 2015. The Andean and Caribbean regions presented the highest levels of anthropic impact, remaining stable over time. Hotspots of change were mainly located in the following regions: Andean (Antioquia, Cauca and Valle del Cauca states), Amazon (Amazonas, parts of Meta, Guaviare and Putumayo states) and Orinoco (Casanare and parts of Meta and Vichada states). In addition, ecosystems that under the IUCN ecosystem risk categories are Critically Endangered (CR) and Vulnerable (VU) were the most affected by a high level of human impact. Spatiotemporal evaluation of the human footprint in Colombia provides new insights about trends in human pressures on ecosystems and constitutes an analytical tool with high potential for harmonizing land use planning and biodiversity conservation.

Páramos, high-mountain tropical ecosystems, are crucial for carbon storage and water regulation for many Andean cities. However, they are subjected to wildland fires that threaten the ecosystem services they provide. Fire activity varies substantially among páramos, making it essential to understand the drivers of this spatial variability. This study evaluates the relative influence of anthropogenic and biophysical factors on fire occurrence in Colombian páramos, analyzing burned area data from 2000 to 2022 using a Random Forest model. Results indicate that fire occurrence is shaped by the interaction between human pressures and biophysical characteristics. Annual precipitation was the most influential predictor: areas with lower mean annual precipitation (<1000–1500 mm/year) were linked to greater burned area. Vegetation cover, assessed using the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), showed a hump-shaped relationship, with intermediate greenness levels (0.13–0.25) being most prone to burning. Anthropogenic factors, especially proximity to buildings and agricultural zones, also had a significant impact. Our results show that fire occurrence in páramos cannot be attributed solely to human pressures but results from the combined effect of anthropogenic and biophysical drivers. Understanding of these interactions underscores the need for socio-ecological perspectives to guide integrated and adaptive management of strategic high-mountain ecosystems.

Colombia se encuentra dentro de los catorce países con mayores índices de diversidad biológica (Andrade-C., 2011), con el hábitat del 10 % de las especies conocidas y aproximadamente 58 312 especies de flora y fauna registradas (SiB Colombia, 2019), en apenas 0.7 % de la superficie continental del planeta. Esta riqueza natural se expresa no solo en cantidad de especies, sino también en comunidades vegetales o tipos de vegetación (más de 1000 tipos), y en niveles de unidades ecológicas o ecosistemas (Rangel-Ch., 2005 ). La biodiversidad del territorio colombiano es el resultado de su posición geográfica y las diferentes combinaciones entre condiciones climáticas, hidrológicas y geomorfológicas. Estas diferencias le permiten contar con distintos “complejos dinámicos de comunidades vegetales, animales y de microorganismos” (Ideam, 2014), distribuidos en 81 tipos de ecosistemas potenciales, correspondientes a unidades ecológicas forestales, arbustivas, de sabana y páramo, de pantanos con vegetación herbácea y de aguas abiertas. Lo anterior produce altos niveles de endemismos (Etter et al., 2017), y especies con distribución geográfica restringida en el mundo, lo que las hace más susceptibles a la extinción por las transformaciones de las áreas naturales y la huella humana (Etter et al., 2017; Hernández-Camacho & Sánchez, 1992).