Unprecedented Fire Season Has Raged Through One of Earth’s Biodiversity Hotspots

With ecological systems ranging from highlands to Andes to the vast plains to the Amazon rainy forest, Colombia – which was at the Central and South American turn – is a home of approximately 10 percent of the world’s biological diversity. Its iconic types include dozens of sex espeletiaSwiss -appearance plants are usually called Frailejones, Or “adult monks”. Their shifts from the fresh leaves lead thick trunks and a sponge density that abandons the fog that is drifting over the unique and wonderful wetlands, named, Paramos.

Between the world The fastest advanced ecosystemThe wet paramos stands unlike the arid atmosphere of the rest of the Andes. Although it covers only 1.7 percent of Colombia, it provides the nation by 85 percent of its drinking water – as it was stored in Frailejones trunks during the toilet and later released in lakes and waterways. All this moisture has historically made Paramos resistant to ignite and spread forest fires.

But this year, an unprecedented fire season witnessed fire in Colombia. One of the wildfires burned more than 100 acres of Frailejones in northeastern Colombia, Berlin Parao alone. It has burned more than 500 fires throughout the country since 2024, consuming at least 42,000 acres of forests, herbal lands and the capital of Colombia, Bogota, in a group of polluted smoke.

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The Forest Forestry season in Colombia usually coincides with the dehydration season from December to March, and the number of fire and the burning area varies from year to year. Study 2022 in fire ReviewData from 2000 to 2020 and found that Colombia sees 100 to 300 fires in January; This year represents the first time that the total month has exceeded 500 fires since the nation began to collect the wildfire data systematically in 1998. Although people initially caused almost all this year, the heat that the climate and drought dried up. Worse than usual.

“The firefighting system has changed,” says Mauricio Aguilar Garravito, an environmental scientist at Cavierian University in Colombia. Old sedimentary layers analyzes show that during the past 10,000 years or so, Paramos of the Northern Andes was burned almost every 100 to 1000 years. “Now there are fires every two to 10 years,” says Agilar Garravito.

January 2024 – at the height of the Southern Hemisphere summer – the hottest in Colombia in January 30 years ago. The temperatures arrived Standard records From 44 ° C (111 degrees Fahrenheit) in Honda, a small town in central Colombia surrounded by four Paramo environmental systems.

This heat increases historical drought in the wider region because the hottest temperatures cause air to pull more moisture from plants. The most dry vegetarian, especially debris on forest floors, hunt more easily. It also causes more burning forests and spreads more quickly.

The current heat and drought can be linked to all climate change and periodic climate style known as the Nino, which has warmer water than the average across the Eastern Pacific Ocean. The heat that this water launches in the air causes a series of changes in weather patterns around the world. The intense temperature increases are distinctive for climate change, and the fingerprints of global warming were found in many thermal waves – including some who brought summer temperatures to parts of South America last winter.

A study published in late January by the Union of Researchers in the International January (WWA) found that the drought that now affects the entire Amazon basin is In the first place, it is driven by climate changeWith some amplification from the Nino. The researchers found that when considering both rains and high evaporation rates, drought has become 30 times more likely due to climate change.

The effects of wild fires of drought and warming temperatures and women are also felt in the far south, such as Val Parasu Chile, where they consumed deadly and deadly forest fires. 64,000 acres and 14,000 homes The lives of more than 131 people have claimed since February 2. “The effect of Nino on the fire on Colombia is mainly transmitted from the most dry weather it brings, its effect on Chile comes more than more hot temperatures.

“The deterioration of ecosystems in Colombia,” Agilar Garravito added. Pinus oocarpa, Pine tree whose habitat is Mexico and Central America. Fallen leaves and pine needles are scattered on the mixing of these dense forests on the mountain, as this substance becomes fierce amid high temperatures and dried air.

Agilar Garvito says the country’s “deep fire management” in the country also played a role in Colombia’s fires. As in the United States, the authorities focused on suppressing fires instead of an integrated management strategy that is controlled by controlling burns, which can help reduce the fuel available for forest fires.

Although the recent rains have helped firefighters control some fire, the coming months are expected to bring more hot temperatures that are likely to continue until the rainy season begins in the spring, Isvari Brito said at a press conference.

Looking further in the future, Aguilar Garavito says that the firefights of the Paramos forests are likely to grow more frequent and intense in the coming decades. Master’s thesis of 2018, written It was more dry Since the end of the last ice age. A Ticket Posted in Plos one In 2019, he found that this trend was Among it by changing the human climate of origin Over recent decades, Paramus Andz is expected to grow more dry in the coming decades. A study in 2022 was written by Jindolin Payry of the University of Andes Mountains in Colombia and published in Borders in environmental science and development I found that 10 percent of Paramos settlement species.It can be subject to extinction by 2070“

“Paramos is very special environmental systems in terms of its restricted distribution, hydrological performance and endemic species that live there, but it is also very fragile,” says Rueda Trujillo, who is now a PhD now, now says. A candidate at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. “Given this, the most intense, frequent and long -term fires definitely show the biological diversity of Paramos – not only Frailejones” – as well as its hydrological work. “

She says: Among these unique ecosystems, she says: “It is really sad to see what remains after the fires.”

This article also Available in Spanish.