ABSTRACT
Paramos occupy the alpine belt of northern South America, between 3000 and 4800 masl. This chapter aims to assess the impact of grazing on paramo secondary succession, including the effect on general ecosystem attributes, the life-form spectrum of vegetation, plant species richness, individual plant species, and the probability of invasion by introduced species more adapted to this kind of disturbance. To analyze the factors that influence plant diversity in this old-field succession, a multiple regression (forward stepwise) was carried out using plant richness as dependent variable, and successional time, percentage of bare soil, total aboveground biomass, weighed height of the vegetation, stoniness, slope, soil texture, total soil nitrogen, and soil total carbon as independent variables. An exclosure experiment was carried out to analyze the effect of grazing on plant biomass and vegetation composition during secondary succession in a Venezuelan paramo.
