#48 - The unique mountain landscape threatened by climate change
By Diego Arguedas Ortiz in Pérez Zeledón, Costa Rica
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Cerro Ena at sunrise. Photo by Diego Arguedas Ortiz
We left the coffee-growing town of San Jerónimo de Pérez Zeledón before sunrise and quickly entered that mind-numbing state that comes with long hikes. Our guide, Rolando, made calm and comforting talk that eased our journey up the mountain. The destination was Cerro Ena, a peak towering at 3,126 meters in the Talamanca cordillera in southwestern Costa Rica; awaiting us were three days of muddy shoes, aching muscles and no mobile phone reception. Bliss.
There is a healing property in the Talamanca peaks, situated in the southwest of the country midway between the Pacific and Atlantic coasts, that you don’t find elsewhere in the country. Yes, the sandy beaches are relaxing and fun, and no song beats a sunset serenade from cloud forest birds, but I find no other ecosystem really unplugs me as much as the tropical alpine landscape known as páramo and the trails that lead to it.
Once here, it becomes impossible to think about what one leaves behind; there’s no mental space for the kitchen sink’s broken pipeline or the morning commute just a day before. The mind is blank. I feel as though this sudden mental space resembles the moment a tree falls in a rainforest: the light and space in the new clearing allows for new things to grow.
A highland garden
The páramo might feel to some like an unexpected landscape to highlight. Costa Rica is more easily connected with golden beaches or lush rainforests. Foreign friends often ask me whether I surf (I do not, sadly), but no one has ever enquired about my hiking habits (passionate, yet undisciplined). Yet here we are, talking about my favourite ecosystem in a climate newsletter.
There is a special kind of sadness in writing about these mountains and knowing how vulnerable they are. We often go to nature to heal and to renew, yet the very places we seek for comfort often end up reminding us of what’s at stake.
The shrubby landscape of the Talamanca páramo. Photo by Diego Arguedas Ortiz
The páramo is the rarest of ecosystems in Costa Rica, existing only above the 3,000 meter line, which makes it highly vulnerable to changes in temperature. In the tropics, the altitude of an ecosystem is a crucial variable in determining its landscape and climate If you stay in one place all year long, there’s barely any temperature difference between January and July (can’t say the same for rain). But once you climb a mountain, you notice different plants and new kinds of birds and beetles.
The páramo harbors lifeforms specialized to its very specific combination of moisture, clouds and temperature. Plants grow here that live nowhere else in the country and they in turn attract birds, insects and other animals that would find no food or shelter elsewhere.
In fact, the wider mountainous region which stretches across southwestern Costa Rica to eastern Panama is considered “habitat islands", as they have no connection to highland areas to the north or south. Once a bird or plant adapts to this region, it finds it hard to migrate elsewhere. As a result, there is a high level of endemic species with over 30% of the ecoregion's flora only existing here.
This uniqueness makes for amazing views. The landscape is dominated by low shrubs, meter-high ferns and dwarf trees that can barely block your vision (but clouds and mist do, on most days). Flowers take different shapes and the tweets of hummingbirds are more audible.
But for me, first among the marvels of the páramo is the turberas, a highland wetland where rainfall accumulates in sizes that vary from ponds to small lagoons. Their mirror-like waters have a magnetic attraction as you walk the trails.
Feeling the impacts
Climate change is already altering this ecosystem. Our guide Rolando’s has lived in this area and hiked to Cerro Ena all his life. He was part of the founding group of the local tourism cooperative that maintains the trails and the shelters. He tells us about lowering water levels in these mountain wetlands and of species that have become increasingly hard to find, such as a local kind of snail.
A large turbera on a trail off Cerro Ena. Photo by Diego Arguedas Ortiz
Globally, the effects of climate change in mountain areas is relatively well known: as temperatures rise, climate zones will shift upwards and entire ecosystems might be displaced. Species that live near the mountaintops might have nowhere to go as they get pushed out of their ecosystems.
The specific effects in Costa Rican páramos are less explored, but local scientists are pushing ahead. Experts from the Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica studied shifting patterns in pollinators and ecologist Andrea Vincent from the Universidad de Costa Rica is currently leading a team exploring how higher temperatures might affect Chirripó, the country’s highest peak. Most of them expect to confirm first hand accounts from guides like Rolando.
This is a heart breaking microcosm of climate impacts in Costa Rica. Around the country, tourism workers livelihoods will be compromised; ecosystem services will be altered; cultural values will be diminished. And for those of us trying to combat climate change who want to wander into nature to renew and forget, we will be reminded.
Diego Arguedas Ortiz is a climate change reporter and communicator from Costa Rica. Find him on Twitter @arguedasortiz
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This post was funded by climate investigation grant awarded to From A Climate Correspondent by the European Federation for Science Journalism (EFSJ) and funded by the BNP Paribas Foundation.
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What else I’m reading
After devouring his 2017 novel New York 2140 in a matter of days last year, I’m now reading Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry of the Future. I’m barely a few pages in, but the setting has already trapped me again and the premise is promising. Once I’m finished, I want to try A Children’s Bible by Lydia Millet.
Who we are
From A Climate Correspondent is a weekly newsletter run by four journalists exploring the climate crisis from around the globe. We regularly also feature guest writers.
Lou Del Bello is an energy and climate journalist based in Delhi, India.
Jocelyn Timperley is a climate journalist based in San José, Costa Rica.
India Bourke is an environment journalist based in London, UK.
Mat Hope is investigative journalist based in Nairobi, Kenya.
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