terça-feira, 16 de novembro de 2010

A Country With a Large Biodiversity...


Basically, biomes are large geographic ecoregions with specific environmental conditions that determine tyical plant and animal communities in that area.

According to IBGE ( Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics, Brazil can be divided into the following 6 biomes:

1) Cerrado (Savanna) : The Cerrado holds the source of three major basins in South America (Amazon/Tocantins, São Francisco and Prata), which results in high water potential and rich biodiversity. This biome is home to more than 6,500 catalogued plant species.
In the Cerrado there is a predominance of savanna formations and a hot sub-humid tropical climate, a dry season and a rainy season.
In the highlands, with extensive plains, are gallery forests, known as riverside and riparian forests, along the watercourse and evergreen foliage all year round; the lowlands, in wet valleys, consist of groups of buriti palms on a layer of grasses.

2) Mata Atlantica (Rainforest): Its main type of vegetation is tropical rain forest, usually consisting of tall trees and related to a hot and humid climate. The Atlantic has been one of the richest and most varied groups of rain forest in South America.
The Atlantic Forest is an environmental complex that includes mountain ranges, valleys, plateaus and level lands throughout the east Atlantic continental range of Brazil.

3) Pantanal: It is characterized by long-term flooding (due to the low permeability of the soil) that occurs annually in the plain, and causes changes in the environment, wildlife and the daily life of local people. The predominant vegetation is savanna, but there are formations of savanna steppe and small areas of semi-deciduous and deciduous forests.
Almost all of the Brazilian fauna is represented in the Brazilian Pantanal.


4) Caatinga: The Caatinga (indigenous name), meaning “clear and open forest”, is uniquely Brazilian. Drought, heat and light characteristic of tropical areas result in a steppe-like, thorny and deciduous (when the leaves fall at a given time) savanna vegetation.
This biome is subject to two dry seasons per year: a long period of drought, followed by intermittent rain and a short drought followed by torrential rains. These two seasons highlight the contrasts of the Caatinga.


5) Pampa (Steppe): The Pampa biome is present only in Rio Grande do Sul. It comprises the South American pampas, stretching through Uruguay and Argentina, and is internationally classified as steppe. The Pampa is marked by rainy weather, without a dry season, and with regular polar fronts with freezing temperatures in winter. The vegetation consists of pampa grass and shrubs


6) Amazon: Amazon is the largest biodiversity reserve in the world and the largest biome in Brazil. It has well-distributed rainfall during the year and rivers with permanent heavy flow. The Brazilian Amazon is marked by the Amazon basin.The characteristic vegetation of the Brazilian Amazon is tropical rain forest, usually composed of tall trees. In the plains accompanying the Amazon River and its tributaries are the lowland forests (periodically flooded) and igapó forests (permanently flooded). Aspects of the savanna, the campinarana, pioneering formations and ecological sanctuaries are also present in this biome.

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