The Paramo Fire Atlas: quantifying burned area and trends across the Tropical Andes

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.