Penn State-led team to study climate-threatened Colombian Paramos’ soil microbes

Editor's note: A translation of this story is available on the College of Agricultural Sciences website en español.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Some scientists believe the Paramos, a grassland ecosystem found in the northern Andes Mountains of South America, are “the world’s fastest evolving and coolest biodiversity hotspot,” according to Estelle Couradeau, assistant professor of soils and environmental microbiology in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences. This ecosystem — which is the prime headwater for lower tropical ecosystems and downstream urban centers in the Andean and the Orinoco-Amazon regions — is in jeopardy, she explained.

Couradeau will lead a National Science Foundation-funded international team conducting research on how climate change will affect soil microbes in the ecologically fragile and important Paramos ecosystem in Colombia’s Andes Mountains.

The $500,000, three-year grant will support scientists from Penn State, Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania and University of Bogotá Jorge Tadeo Lozano in Colombia, to conduct collaborative research in the Paramo Chingaza National Park in Colombia. The researchers will investigate changes in temperature and moisture, how these changes affect the soil microbial diversity and the function of soil microbes in storing organic carbon in the Paramo soils.

The project is part of the activities of the Colombia-USA Water-Energy-Food Nexus Alliance, an initiative that focuses on understanding the complex challenges associated with water-energy-food systems. The alliance also guides appropriate interventions that promote sustainable development and foster capacity-building with local and global partners.

“The increase in global temperature is having a more pronounced effect in the Paramos than in most other ecosystems around the world,” Couradeau said. “That’s why the work that that we're embarking on is so important.”

Under current climate-change scenarios, the Paramos are projected to shrink by 39% to 52% within 50 years, and they might disappear altogether, along with the ecosystem services they provide, Couradeau warned. With them would go the critical role their soils play in water flow regulation and carbon sequestration.

“The unique geographic situation of the cold and humid Paramos provides us with an unparalleled opportunity to study soil microbial communities in carbon-rich soils,” she said. “Those soils are extremely vulnerable to both the increase in temperature and decrease in moisture that will impact soils around the globe as climate change progresses.”

Jose-Luis Machado, associate biology professor at Swarthmore College and co-principal investigator, emphasized that although the Colombian Paramos are considered tropical because they are situated near the equator, the climate is not hot.

“The Paramos are a very important large reservoir of carbon in some ways equivalent to what we see in the tundra where the temperatures are relatively low, so the accumulation of carbon has occurred over a longer period of time,” said Machado, who is Colombian.

He is also an expert in soil biogeochemistry and the relationships between soil physico-chemical properties and respiration rates.

“The Paramos are such interesting places because, during the day, you have summer conditions, and during the night, you have winter conditions,” he said. “So, what you experience here in much of the United States on a seasonal basis, you experience in the Paramos daily. It's an extreme environment.”

Johanna Santamaria Vanegas, professor at the University of Bogotá Jorge Tadeo Lozano, credits the Colombia-USA Water-Energy-Food Nexus Alliance for providing a framework and support network that enables the Paramos soil microbes research project to be launched. An expert in soil microbiology related to the Paramos, she will play a key role in the study analyzing microorganisms living in the soil.

“Working with the faculty at Penn State has given us the opportunity we needed to conduct this kind of research,” she said. “And that’s critical because the work we are doing in the Paramos will result in us generating information planners here in Colombia need to make decisions to protect this ecosystem that is so important in South America for its water-provision services.”

The Paramos research project also includes two novel aspects.

First, State College Area High School teacher Danielle Rosensteel has been working for the past six months implementing environmental monitoring projects with her students in advanced biology elective courses under the guidance of Couradeau. Rosensteel intends to keep this collaboration going and to have a cohort of students engage yearly in projects related to the Paramos, such as building wireless sensors to monitor and store soil temperature, moisture and air temperature data.

And second, in 2026, the research team will hold a Paramos Symposium that will bring together national and international experts working in Colombia and other Andean Mountain regions where the Paramos are found. The symposium ideas, recommendations and future research directions will be synthesized in a strategic plan written in English and Spanish that will be disseminated to diverse stakeholders.

This unique project epitomizes the Water-Energy-Food Nexus Initiative lead by Penn State, pointed out co-principal investigator Siela Maximova, research professor in biotechnology in the plant sciences department. Maximova also serves as director for Latin America and the Caribbean for Penn State Global and Global Faculty Fellow for Ag Sciences Global.

“This interdisciplinary initiative encapsulates everything that we always want to do as a land-grant university,” she said. “Not only will it result in the publishing of research articles and learning in the classrooms, but it will also offer experiential learning and international field work experience. It promises to have a real impact on the students and faculty from U.S. and Colombia, and on the local communities.”