According to IBGE (2004), [1] Brazil has its territory occupied by six terrestrial biomes and one marine biome.
According to IBGE (2004), [1] Brazil has its territory occupied by six terrestrial biomes and one marine biome.
The term "biome" has several meanings. In a narrow sense (e.g., Whittaker, 1975; Coutinho, 2006), used in literature, it names physio-functionally defined small-scale areas, habitat types or ecosystem types. Although it includes both the plants and the animals and microorganisms of a community, in practice, it is defined by the climate and physiognomy or general appearance of the plants of the community. [2] [3] [4]
In the broad sense, adopted by Joly et al. (1978) and the IBGE (2016), biome can be understood as a synonym of "biogeographic province" (e.g., Rizzini, 1963, Eiten 1977, Cabrera and Willink 1980, the term "floristic province" or "phytogeographic" is used when considering plant species only), or as an approximate synonym of "morphoclimatic and phytogeographical domain" (Ab'Sáber, 1967, 2003). [2]
In this broad sense, the "Projeto Radam" (Veloso et al., 1973) applies the term "phytoecological region", and IBGE (2012) adopts the term "floristic region". [5] However, the term "region" must be understood, in this case, in the generalist sense of "area". The terms "region" and "province" have specific traditional meanings in phytogeography: regions are areas characterized by endemic families, and provinces are areas characterized by endemic genera and species. [6]
In the case of the 'domains' of Ab'Sáber (1967, 2003), the defined area is characterized by the predominance of certain geomorphological and climatic characteristics, and also by a certain predominant floristic province (vegetative type). However, there is no uniformity: enclaves from other provinces, characteristics of other domains, may occur within this area. [2]
The Amazon Forest is the largest forest formation on the planet, conditioned by the humid equatorial climate. It is equivalent to 35% of the forest areas of the planet. It has a wide variety of plant formations. Most of Brazil is covered by the Amazon's forest areas and this number is around 60% and within that there is about 55,000 different species of plants populating it.
The Cerrado presents diverse regions, ranging from clean fields devoid of woody vegetation to cerradão, a dense tree formation. Its climate is particularly striking, presenting two well-defined seasons. The Cerrado is made up of grasslands, Savannahs and dry forests. It is the second largest biome behind the Amazon in South America. It covers around 21% of territory in Brazil and is located in the highlands of central Brazil.
The Atlantic Forest is composed of a series of ecosystems with very different structures and composition of flowers, as well as the climatic characteristics of the region where it occurs, having as a common element the exposure to the humid winds that blow from the ocean.
The Caatinga has dry soils and its vegetation is formed by palm trees, such as buriti, oiticica, babassu and carnauba. Much of its northeastern part suffers a high risk of desertification due to the degradation of vegetation cover and soil. Caatinga is located in the Northeast part of South America and covers about 12% of the region.
The Pampa is characterized by the amount of herbaceous species and several typologies of the country, composing in some regions, environments integrated with the Araucária forest. The flat plains of the Gaucho plains and plateaus and the soft-wavy reliefs are colonized by pioneering species that form an open savanna vegetation.
The Pantanal is an alluvial plain influenced by rivers that drain the basin of the Upper Paraguay, where it develops a fauna and flora of rare beauty and abundance. This ecosystem is formed by largely sandy terrains, covered by different physiognomies due to the variety of microregions and flood regimes.
The Brazilian marine biome is located on the "Marine Zone of Brazil", the continental shelf biotope, and presents several ecosystems.
The Brazilian Coastal Zone has as distinctive aspects in its long extension through different biomes that arrive until the coast, the biome of the Amazônia, the biome of the Caatinga and bioma of the Atlantic Forest. These biomes with wide variety of species and ecosystems, cover more than 8,500 km of coastline.
A biome is a biogeographical unit consisting of a biological community that has formed in response to the physical environment in which they are found and a shared regional climate. Biomes may span more than one continent. Biome is a broader term than habitat and can comprise a variety of habitats.
Tocantins is one of the 26 states of Brazil. It is the newest state, formed in 1988 and encompassing what had formerly been the northern two-fifths of the state of Goiás. Tocantins covers 277,620.91 square kilometres (107,190.03 sq mi) and had an estimated population of 1,496,880 in 2014. Construction of its capital, Palmas, began in 1989; most of the other cities in the state date to the Portuguese colonial period. With the exception of Araguaína, there are few other cities with a significant population in the state. The government has invested in a new capital, a major hydropower dam, railroads and related infrastructure to develop this primarily agricultural area. The state has 0.75% of the Brazilian population and is responsible for 0.5% of the Brazilian GDP.
A savanna or savannah is a mixed woodland-grassland ecosystem characterised by the trees being sufficiently widely spaced so that the canopy does not close. The open canopy allows sufficient light to reach the ground to support an unbroken herbaceous layer consisting primarily of grasses. According to Britannica, there exists four savanna forms; savanna woodland where trees and shrubs form a light canopy, tree savanna with scattered trees and shrubs, shrub savanna with distributed shrubs, and grass savanna where trees and shrubs are mostly nonexistent.
Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests (TSMF), also known as tropical moist forest, is a subtropical and tropical forest habitat type defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature.
Vegetation is an assemblage of plant species and the ground cover they provide. It is a general term, without specific reference to particular taxa, life forms, structure, spatial extent, or any other specific botanical or geographic characteristics. It is broader than the term flora which refers to species composition. Perhaps the closest synonym is plant community, but vegetation can, and often does, refer to a wider range of spatial scales than that term does, including scales as large as the global. Primeval redwood forests, coastal mangrove stands, sphagnum bogs, desert soil crusts, roadside weed patches, wheat fields, cultivated gardens and lawns; all are encompassed by the term vegetation.
A phytochorion, in phytogeography, is a geographic area with a relatively uniform composition of plant species. Adjacent phytochoria do not usually have a sharp boundary, but rather a soft one, a transitional area in which many species from both regions overlap. The region of overlap is called a vegetation tension zone.
Amazônia Legal, also known as Brazil's Legal Amazon (BLA), is the largest socio-geographic division in Brazil, containing all nine states in the Amazon basin. The government designated this region in 1948 based on its studies on how to plan the economic and social development of the Amazon region.
The Cerrado is a vast ecoregion of tropical savanna in eastern Brazil, being present in the states of Goiás, Mato Grosso do Sul, Mato Grosso, Tocantins, Maranhão, Piauí, Bahia, Minas Gerais, São Paulo, Paraná and the Federal District. The core areas of the Cerrado biome are the Brazilian highlands – the Planalto. The main habitat types of the Cerrado consist of forest savanna, wooded savanna, park savanna and gramineous-woody savanna. The Cerrado also includes savanna wetlands and gallery forests.
Shrubland, scrubland, scrub, brush, or bush is a plant community characterized by vegetation dominated by shrubs, often also including grasses, herbs, and geophytes. Shrubland may either occur naturally or be the result of human activity. It may be the mature vegetation type in a particular region and remain stable over time, or a transitional community that occurs temporarily as the result of a disturbance, such as fire. A stable state may be maintained by regular natural disturbance such as fire or browsing. Shrubland may be unsuitable for human habitation because of the danger of fire. The term was coined in 1903.
Phytogeography or botanical geography is the branch of biogeography that is concerned with the geographic distribution of plant species and their influence on the earth's surface. Phytogeography is concerned with all aspects of plant distribution, from the controls on the distribution of individual species ranges to the factors that govern the composition of entire communities and floras. Geobotany, by contrast, focuses on the geographic space's influence on plants.
The wildlife of Brazil comprises all naturally occurring animals, plants, and fungi in the South American country. Home to 60% of the Amazon Rainforest, which accounts for approximately one-tenth of all species in the world, Brazil is considered to have the greatest biodiversity of any country on the planet. It has the most known species of plants (60,000), freshwater fish (3,000), amphibians (1,188), snakes (430), insects (90,000) and mammals (775) It also ranks third on the list of countries with the most bird species (1,971) and the third with the most reptile species (848). The number of fungal species is unknown. Approximately two-thirds of all species worldwide are found in tropical areas, often coinciding with developing countries such as Brazil. Brazil is second only to Indonesia as the country with the most endemic species.
The campo rupestre is a discontinuous montane subtropical ecoregion occurring across three different biomes in Brazil: Cerrado, Atlantic Forest and Caatinga. Originally, campo rupestre was used to characterize the montane vegetation of the Espinhaço Range, but recently this term has been broadly applied by the scientific community to define high altitudinal fire-prone areas dominated by grasslands and rocky outcrops.
The Caatinga enclaves moist forests is an ecoregion of the Tropical moist forests Biome, and the South American Atlantic Forest biome. It is located in northeastern Brazil.
Renosterveld is a term used for one of the major plant communities and vegetation types of the Cape Floristic Region which is located in southwestern and southeastern South Africa, in southernmost Africa. It is an ecoregion of the Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub biome.
The Amazon biome contains the Amazon rainforest, an area of tropical rainforest, and other ecoregions that cover most of the Amazon basin and some adjacent areas to the north and east. The biome contains blackwater and whitewater flooded forest, lowland and montane terra firma forest, bamboo and palm forest, savanna, sandy heath and alpine tundra. Some areas of the biome are threatened by deforestation for timber and to make way for pasture or soybean plantations.
The IBGE Ecological Reserve, is a protected area in the Federal District, Brazil. It has a diverse ecology including various rare or endangered species, and is an important center for research into the ecology of the poorly protected Cerrado environment. Numerous scientific papers have referred to research conducted in the reserve.
Campinarana, also called Rio Negro Campinarana, is a neotropical ecoregion in the Amazon biome of the north west of Brazil and the east of Colombia that contains vegetation adapted to extremely poor soil. It includes savanna, scrub and forest, and contains many endemic species of fauna and flora.
Campina is a Neotropical ecoregion found in the Amazon biome. It refers to vegetation that grows on infertile sandy soil with poor drainage. The term may be used to include open forest, shrubland and meadow, or may be restricted to treeless meadows.