**3. Definition and biogeographic contexts of high Andean forests in Colombia and their sociocultural aspects**

#### **3.1 Biogeographical aspects**

It could be said that the high Andean forests are located in a strip that goes from 2400 m above sea level to 3800 m above sea level. They are called high Andean forests or high montane forest, which are:

*Forests included in the strip between 2900 to 3800 meters above sea level that are characterized as a stratum of trees and shrubs between 3 and 8 m high, with a predominance of compounds. (Col) are representative of this category oak groves and cloud forests, the vast majority located in relictual areas in the Sinú-Caribe, Caquetá,*  *High Equatorial Andean Forests and Their Socioecological Problems DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.109776*

> *Meta, Patía, Catatumbo River, Alto and Medio Magdalena, Medio Cauca, Río Atrato and Sabana de Bogotá basins. [4]*

However, it should be noted that the Colombian high Andean zone, which bioclimatically would be between 2400 and 3200 m above sea level, is characterized as cold climate. The following factors would explain this.

There are three large mountain ranges that have their own biogeographical characteristics and with it, the location of these natural forest masses varies in the altitudinal strip from one mountain range to another.

The diversity of the floristic composition according to scholars of this is due to the great variety of factors that have acted in its genesis and that is particularly associated since the geological origin of the Andes, which have been forming an extraordinary variety of geological formations that continues throughout the millennia and that constitutes the basis of the origin of the diverse and complex floristic and faunal diversities of the ecosystems of the high mountain equatorial. During the last great period of the Quaternary, due to climatic changes, the strip of forests throughout the Andean corridor has been changing and with its composition and structure due to migrations of some species from temperate zones to cold zones, this diversity in floristic composition in some especially wetter areas, Known as cloud forests have led to define these as areas of megabiodiversity or recognized as one of the main centers of diversity and speciation in the world [5–7].

In the northern Andean zone of the Cordillera Oriental, the most characteristic species on its eastern slope are the enennillo (Wenmania tomentosa) and on the western slope the oak (Quercus humboldtii).

There are relatively few in-depth studies of the forests of the equatorial high mountain despite the fact that these ecosystems have been under great pressure, especially due to the expansion of the agricultural frontier.

*"Several estimates suggest that less than 10% of the original Andean forests remain in Colombia" (Henderson et al. 1991) and, probably, less than 5% of the high Andean forests. [8]*

Recent studies have found that higher altitude forests are more heterogeneous, therefore not finding a dominant species [9].

There is also the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta as a set of ecosystems independent of the Andean mountain ranges and older than these, where the presence of equatorial forests at the heights mentioned for the high Andean forest, depends on its biogeographic characteristics of high complexity. Both the forests of the Andean areas and those of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta above 2400 m above sea level can be grouped as equatorial forests of the high mountains.

#### **3.2 Occupation of the spaces of the high Andean forests and sociocultural aspects**

#### *3.2.1 Construction of mestizo peasant culture*

The mestizo peasant culture of the high mountain or cold climate, which is characterized by the use of the ruana, the scarf or the blankets, as one of the main founding peoples of the Colombian nation of origin especially Muisca, Paez, and Pasto is located in these territories and for centuries has contributed to constitute the current territories in the high Andean mountains.

"The territory of the páramo" has been forged in the amalgam between settlers and high Andean nature, is the genesis of the crossing of their realities. Recognize that these ecosystems have been undergoing transformation processes mediated by human presence, to the extent that lagoons and their sacred environments since time immemorial had been treated as sacred sites by the Native Americans of the Chibcha civilization and others earlier and for 500 years by the Hispanic presence that displaced the indigenous cultures of the valleys and fertile slopes, The poor peasant, product of miscegenation and the indigenous peoples survivors of the humanitarian catastrophe of extermination took refuge in these natural scenarios and configured since then new environmental systems. Thus, peasant peoples or peasant indigenous peoples emerged who became the authentic environmental subjects of these territories to the extent that they chose as an action of resistance the defense of the land as a unifying element, not seen as circumscribed to private property, but closely linked to the concept of territory, nature, common good and the sacredness of it, while it is the giver of the benefits in food, water, work and rest. The mythical imaginary of the Chibcha ancestor, as the spirit of the current environmental subject, survives in the mestizo culture of the peasant of the region of the Cundiboyacense highlands, and in a similar way we can say that, in the Nariño and Cauca mountains, in the Serranía del Cocuy, in Perijá, the Central mountain range and the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta [10, p. 199].

The high mountain ecosystems that until the mid-twentieth century was preserved almost intact, have been suffering a process of deterioration due to social and economic processes, related to the displacement or migration of populations from the mountain slopes or the high valleys and Andean plateaus, to higher areas, due to the deterioration of the soils, to the intensification of potato cultivation, propitiated by the green revolution, which advised the use of the soils of these ecosystems and those of the high Andean forest as the propitious ones for this crop. In this way, the high mountains became the last refuge of peasant and indigenous inhabitants who were also dragged there by the various political violence that occurred throughout the twentieth century. The peasant or the indigenous who had kept sacredness in front of these territories and their lagoons were surprised by the aforementioned social processes and through strategies of adaptation to the difficult climatic conditions of these lands, settled there hunting, fishing, and cultivating tubers and roots. Throughout this period of ancestral recognition, as of the occupation, the relationship of the inhabitants with nature has not differentiated the páramo itself, as a non-forested ecosystem, from the high forests that were established as limits between the areas of the high mountain and the lowlands of the mountain slopes in the cold land, traditionally occupied by peasants from the highlands and mountain ranges in Boyacá, Cundinamarca, Santanderes, Tolima, Cauca, Nariño, Valle, Antiguo Caldas, and Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. This differentiation did not occur because they constituted a set of habitats where the cultures of the cold lands developed and the highest areas were considered common properties, which could not be transformed into the regime of private property that characterized the other Andean territories during the Colony and the Republic.
