Caracterización preliminar de la vegetación natural en los ecosistemas de alta montaña de Colombia

Abstract

The Colombian mountain compound, due to the altitudinal gradient it depicts, offers an enormous biodiversity in its topography, climate, and vegetation. From all the existing different landscapes in the high mountains of the country, vegetation is the one element that ultimately expresses the diverse settings resulting in its plateaus, valleys, tablelands, hills and chain of mountains; a surface that comprises almost 323.000 square meters, approximately 28% of the whole continental area. This work presents a brief description of the existing vegetation units in the high-mountain environments of our country, both as part of the Andean system and of the so-called periphery relieves.