Biome and border identities have always been important considerations for the development of geography, especially regarding the use of applied research for biodiversity conservation. Nowhere is this more apparent than in books that are considered to represent the “state of the knowledge,” some of which are recognized as “vade mecums,” as guides for future work in ecosystems conservation. When a team of 2 editors compiles a vast amount of information in expert contributions in order to address the daunting challenge of producing a scientific reference work for use in the highland areas of developing countries, the result can be a beacon for fostering mountain geography.

This is the case of Kappelle and Horn's book. Those reading scientific literature in Spanish will consider this book a “bible” with regard to the study of Costa Rican highland environments. Robert Hofstede, author of Páramos of the World and current IUCN regional representative for South America, asserts that this new contribution “deserves praise not only for compiling up-to-date existing information but also for including new information, previously unpublished or limited to a restricted readership, about the Costa Rican highlands”—which cover about 1% of the national territory. He echoes other “paramologists” of South America when he expresses a healthy professional jealousy that “a country with only 15,000 hectares of páramo has achieved such an important volume including geological, geographical and biological information,” and also states that this publishing effort is commendable and worth emulating in the Andean countries and in other comparable ecosystems of the world.

Thanks to the financial aid of the Foundation for Tropical Research of the Netherlands, The Nature Conservancy, and the universities of Utrecht, Amsterdam, and Tennessee (Knoxville), the volume represents an important international effort catalyzed in Costa Rica by the National Institute of Biodiversity (INBio) and the Ministry of Environment and Energy (MINAE). There are contributions from both local and foreign scientists and practitioners, including some world authorities in the study of their botanical or zoological subjects. The editors, despite having their origins in the Netherlands and the USA, consider themselves as “Ticos” (Costa Ricans) at heart. Although they were attracted to the mountains because of their interest in tropical ecology, their joint edition is an achievement of holistic thinking in favor of the mountain environments of Costa Rica. They met there serendipitously in the late 1980s, and the outcomes of this encounter have matured over the years. After many workshops, international conferences, congresses, journal articles, and books on cloud forests and fire ecology, it has resulted in a co-edited book of titanic proportions.

The book comprises 37 chapters written by 63 contributors; Kappelle and Horn authored or coauthored 16 chapters. As an overview volume, the book is organized in 7 parts: (1) general aspects of the páramos; (2) physical aspects; (3) paleoecological and biogeographical aspects; (4) biodiversity aspects: fungi and plants; (5) biodiversity aspects: animals; (6) biodiversity aspects: ecosystems; and (7) aspects of conservation and sustainable development. The book also includes the Paipa Declaration from the first World Páramos Congress (2002) and the list of publications of Adelaida Chaverri Polini (1947–2003), to whom this book is rightfully dedicated. A portrait of this pioneer of Costa Rican páramo research on the summit of Cerro Chirripó opens a rich collection of photographs, diagrams and illustrations that conclude with 18 pages of full colored photographs of the most significant landscapes.

The editors are quick to point out the need for more research to understand the dynamics of Central America's highland grasslands and to guide efforts towards the protection of this small but significant portion of Costa Rica's ecosystems. However, as a highland grassland biome, the páramo extends southward to the Huancabamba depression in northern Peru, where it takes the form of a drier tussock grass community, the jalca; and on towards the Central Andes of Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina, where aridity has led to the development of yet a different grassland known as puna. The book makes a strong case for reconsidering the character of the landscape, hinting at heavy human influence, particularly as fire frequency and intensity are seen as management tools in what some consider “cultural landscapes.” I was glad to read many chapters that included pyrophytic species as páramo indicators and others known to be serotonic as components of Costa Rican highland florulas, evidencing their human dimension. The chapter on bird fauna helps to demonstrate that most animals are also likely inhabitants of the cloud forests—which certainly constitute potential vegetation at these elevations—and that most are ubiquitous in human-dominated landscapes.

While I did not find a clear answer to the old debate over forests and prairies on tropical mountains, it is clear that all considerations of biodiversity conservation are linked to the presence of humans, who are one of the main factors determining the actual vegetation. For instance, the important landscape history of fire dynamics observed in the Cerro Chirripó leaves one wondering if the few surviving indigenous groups, such as the Bribri and the Cabecar, modify landscapes through their highland–lowland interactions, or if the many colonist groups who set up camp there and opened up forests for cultivation and herding are to blame for the current landscape configuration and species composition.

With this book, most mountain geography colleagues will be confident to revisit the biogeography of neotropical highlands and remap the páramo to include the highlands of Costa Rica, Panama, Venezuela, and Colombia; the jalca to include the highlands of Ecuador and northern Peru; and the puna to include the highlands of Southern Peru, Bolivia, Northern and Central Chile, and Northwest Argentina—although in Tucumán, Argentina, the name páramo is still fondly used by highlanders.

Whether the term páramo is used to refer to the climatic conditions of cold, misty, thin air, or to the actual ecosystem, this book represents the state of the art in conventional scientific knowledge of Costa Rica's mountains. It would have been fine to include a chapter relating to agricultural landscapes or to ethnobiological, traditional knowledge of the very few remaining indigenous groups living in the isolated Talamanca range, reportedly the northernmost limit of the páramo—despite Kappelle's assertion that its northern limit should rather be Irazu and Turrialba near the capital city of San José. It would also have been good to include a chapter on land use change based on repeat photography to ascertain the biodiversity risk potential and factual land use change, as there is new evidence that current forest cover has increased in comparison with figures from the past few decades. The book contains a good description of protected areas, especially national parks, but there is a dearth of information regarding other management options, such as private reserves, ecotourism enterprises, or drinking water capture and hydroelectric power generation, for example in the Río Macho and Tapantí, which has been pointed out elsewhere as a prime páramo for environmental services. Costa Rica has recently declared a new national park (Los Quetzales) which includes an important remnant of páramos. I still wonder if the namesake of this new park is appropriate for emphasizing the need to protect tropical montane cloud forests that are converted into páramos, to be used either as pastures or as rangelands, in the process now known as “paramization” or “tropical highland savannization.”

This is a truly masterful bibliographic work, which brings the editors as well as their topic to the forefront of tropical mountain geographical research. I am particularly glad that the book has appeared in Spanish, thereby ending a long period of unavailability of this type of state-of-the-art literature to local scientists, professionals, and students, who certainly need to be exposed directly to the challenge of designing the future of Costa Rica's páramos. It is refreshing to witness how two doctoral students who became fascinated with the country have now given back to the Ticos, in their own language, a highly valuable scientific treatise on páramos, making it an indispensable reference for future montological research and application. Pura vida—this book is scientific advancement with a purpose!