puna

(ecology) An alpine biological community in the central portion of the Andes Mountains of South America characterized by low-growing, widely spaced plants that lack much green color most of the year.

An alpine biological community in the central portion of the Andes Mountains of South America. Sparsely vegetated, treeless stretches cover high plateau country (altiplano) and slopes of central and southern Peru, Bolivia, northern Chile, and northwestern Argentina. The poor vegetative cover and the puna animals are limited by short seasonal precipitation as well as by the low temperatures of high altitudes.

Like the paramos of the Northern Andes, punas occur above timberline, and extend upward, in modified form, to perpetual snow. Due to greater heights of the Central Andean peaks, aeolian regions, that is, regions supplied with airborne nutrients above the upper limit of vascular plants, generally the snowline, are more extensive here than above the paramos. See also Paramo.