Pico Humboldt is Venezuela's second highest peak, at 4,925 metres above sea level. It is located in the Sierra Nevada de Merida, in the Venezuelan Andes of ( Mérida State). The peak, its sister peak Pico Bonpland, and the surrounding

páramo Páramo () may refer to a variety of alpine tundra ecosystems located in the Andes Mountain Range, South America. Some ecologists describe the páramo broadly as "all high, tropical, montane vegetation above the continuous timberline". A narrower ...

s are protected by the Sierra Nevada National Park. The mountain is named after German explorer and naturalist

Alexander von Humboldt Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (14 September 1769 – 6 May 1859) was a German polymath, geographer, natural history, naturalist, List of explorers, explorer, and proponent of Romanticism, Romantic philosophy and Romanticism ...

Glaciers

The summit was formerly surrounded by glaciers, including the two largest out of the four

glacier A glacier (; or ) is a persistent body of dense ice, a form of rock, that is constantly moving downhill under its own weight. A glacier forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation over many years, often centuries. It acquires ...

s remaining in the country (the other two smaller glaciers were on Pico Bolívar). The glaciers on Humboldt Peak (as most

tropical The tropics are the regions of Earth surrounding the equator, where the sun may shine directly overhead. This contrasts with the temperate or polar regions of Earth, where the Sun can never be directly overhead. This is because of Earth's ax ...

glaciers) have been receding fast since the 1970s. By 2009, all but one glacier, the Humboldt Glacier, had vanished. In 2019, the remaining glacier covers an area of 0.1 km² and was forecast to melt completely within a decade: in May 2024, the Humboldt Glacier was officially downgraded to an ice field, no longer considered a glacier. Pico Humboldt Venezuela cut

Glacier ecosystem

Humboldt peak also hosts the last remnant of the Tropical glacier ecosystem of the Cordillera de Merida. This ecosystem is formed by the interconnected remaining ice substrate, proglacial lakes and glacier forefield. As the ice substrate declines, the risk of losing these connections increases and the ecosystem is considered critically endangered (category CR) with high risk of imminent collapse, according to a recent

IUCN Red List of Ecosystems The IUCN Red List of Ecosystems (RLE) is a global framework for monitoring and documenting the status of ecosystems. It was developed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature for biodiversity risk assessment. Its main objectives are ...

assessment.

Notes

References

* Jahn A, ''Observaciones glaciológicas de los Andes venezolanos''. Cult. Venez. 1925, 64:265-80

External links

* Humboldt Glaciers of Venezuela Geography of Mérida (state) Páramos Sierra Nevada National Park (Venezuela) {{Venezuela-geo-stub