Abstract:
In High-Andean ecosystems Climate Change (CC) adds up to the human activities that threat their rich biodiversity. It is expected that by 2049, CC will decrease páramo cover in 30%, and it will cause alteration in seasonal patterns, in temperature means and will increase the frequency of extreme climatic events. Tese factors will afect biodiversity, causing changes on species distributions, and thus changes on the structure and composition of communities. Terefore, we need to understand the individual biology of each species and their response to environmental changes in order to evaluate their vulnerability to CC. Tis project is part of a long-term global monitoring initiative that aims at understanding CC efects on high-mountain ecosystems. We have surveyed vegetation changes and soil temperature, on control plots and on units subject to experimental passive warming using Open Top Chambers (OTC) for fve years, at 4850 m.o.s.l. Tere was a higher species turnover and species cover change inside the units with OTC than on the control plots. Additionally, these units showed a higher productivity than the ones not subjected to experimental warming. Tese fndings support the predicted behavior of high-mountain ecosystems to CC.