The Atlantic forest is a hotspot that covers … These figures have direct implications on This is surprising, given that the biodiversity of the Atlantic Forest is on par with the Amazon. Humanity would cease to exist! Atlantic Forest – Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina, Uruguay. The Tropical Andes (Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia) 2. The Biodiversity Hotspot of the Atlantic Forest - WorldAtlas We show that the southern Atlantic forest was climatically unstable relative to the central region, which served as a large climatic refugium for neotropical species in the late Pleistocene. Importance of Biodiversity Hotspots. Today, only about 7 percent of the original forest … It is estimated to have once covered over a million square kilometers, the Atlantic forest has now been reduce. The Atlantic Forest is less well known than the Amazon rainforest but it, too, is a hot-spot for biodiversity. Meso-American forests 6. A hotspot, in other words, is irreplaceable. While the Amazon is another major home of diverse species and provides the earth with significant carbon absorption, it technically does not meet the criteria of a biodiversity hotspot. #1: Atlantic Forest – Paraguay, Brazil, Argentina. This biodiversity hotspot originally covered about 1.2 million square km. However, due to coffee and sugar plantations, the forest was decimated to less than 0.1 million square km. The hotspot provides habitat for 8,000 endemic plant species and around 950 birds. The Atlantic Forest of South America hosts an incredible diversity of flora and fauna that is facing numerous threats due to human activities in the region. The Atlantic Rainforest is home to an incredibly array of biodiversity. Global Biodiversity Hotspots 1. The second main ecoregion, the interior Atlantic Forest, stretches across the foothills of the Serra do Mar into southern Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina. Tumbes-Chocó-Magdalena is a biodiversity hotspot that includes the tropical moist forests and dry forests found along South America’s Pacific coast, as well as the Galapagos Islands. ; It must have 30% or less of its original natural vegetation.In other words, it must be threatened. The forest structure of the Atlantic Forest contains multiple canopies that support an extremely rich vegetation mix. The Philippines 5. It must have at least 1,500 vascular plants as endemics — which is to say, it must have a high percentage of plant life found nowhere else on the planet. ATLANTIC SERIES: Data on the richest neotropical hotspot. Specifically 224 areas are under protection under category 1,2, and 3. Vast tracts of the Atlantic Forest region have been cleared for expanding human habitation and economic activities. Brazilian Atlantic Forest lato sensu: the most ancient Brazilian forest, and a biodiversity hotspot, is highly threatened by climate change. The Atlantic Forest as known as Mata Atlântica stretches. Only 11.6 % of the natural vegetation cover remains in an intensely fragmented state, which results in high vulner-ability of this biome to climate change. Currently, about 7% of the original This reveals a hotspot within the Brazilian Atlantic forest hotspot. The plants native to the forest is 8,000. The Brazilian Atlantic Forest ranks among the top five biodiversity hotspots in the world, yet it is also one of the rainforests most impacted by human activities. As an example, we apply this approach to the Atlantic Forest, a global biodiversity hotspot with abundant knowledge on the taxonomy and distribution of its flora. Madagascar 3. Western Sunda (in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei) 8. Biodiversity Hotspots of the World (1 of 36): The Atlantic Forest of South America “ Home to 35% of the South American population, the Atlantic Forest is one of the most fragmented tropical/subtropical forests in the world, which may well represent the present or future of other tropical forests worldwide .” The Atlantic Forest and its related ecosystems originally covered an area corresponding to 16% of Brazilian territory. The Atlantic Forest is one of the most diverse, endemic and threatened biomes of the world, qualifying it as a biodiversity hotspot (Myers et al. The Atlantic Forest is a biodiversity hotspot located along Brazil’s Atlantic coast. This initiative is lead by Profs. Here, we aim at quantifying the impacts of forest degradation on a major biodiversity hotspot located in eastern South-America, the Atlantic Forest (Supplementary Fig. Our aims were to quantify and map the plant ecoregions of the Atlantic Forest, a biodiversity hotspot that covers ca 150 million ha in eastern South America. Colombo AF(1), Joly CA. The Atlantic Forest is considered one of the main world's biodiversity hotspots (Myers, Mittermeier, Mittermeier, da Fonseca, & Kent, 2000), as it hosts a large number of endemic species and has already lost about 88% of its original distribution area (Ribeiro et al., 2009). These ecological hotspots support more than 15,000 endemic plant species and some of those have lost up to 95% of their natural habitat. The remaining vegetation is 99,944 km^2. All the species on Earth compete with each other for It is a unique, large biome (more than 3000 km in latitude; 2500 in longitude), marked by high biodiversity, high degree of endemic species and, at the same time, extremely threatened. Here, we use an unprecedented dataset of 1819 field surveys covering the entire Atlantic Forest biodiversity hotspot. 64 species from the Atlantic Forest, a biodiversity hotspot with abundant knowledge on the taxonomy and distribution of its flora. The Atlantic Forest, considered Latin America’s most important biome for biodiversity after the Amazon Forest, is almost gone, even though it was flourishing in Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina as recently as the 1970s. Rio Grande do Norte south to Rio Grande do Sul. As a result, 2) The next biodiversity hotspot I chose is the Atlantic Forest that lies along the Atlantic Coast of Brazil and runs into other countries such as Argentina. Biodiversity and biomass erosion were both lower inside strictly protected 28 conservation units, particularly in large ones. Loss of species at this rate would mean reduced air for us to breathe, food to consume, or even water to drink and utilize. Finally, the fact that aridity has been showed to be a main driver of Atlantic Forest floristic structure suggests that this hotspot may be threatened by climate change. To qualify as a biodiversity hotspot, a region must meet two strict criteria:. We focus on the Atlantic Forest arborescent flora, a plant growth form which is well represented in … The ecoregion covers an area of 1,315,460 square km and encompasses a variety of habitats including mangrove forests, shrublands, grasslands, and tropical forests. And that is exactly what new research shows: the Atlantic Forest provides one of the most important opportunities for landscape restoration in the world. along Brazil's Atlantic coast, from the northern state of. Map of the Atlantic Forest Biodiversity Hotspot, from the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF) The Atlantic Forest extends 656,374 square miles along the eastern coast of Brazil and inland through parts of Argentina and Paraguay. One of the world’s top five biodiversity hotspots, the Atlantic Forest is a place of extraordinary beauty and a treasure house of biodiversity.Tragically, much of its immense variety of flora and fauna is severely endangered by habitat loss, and the Woolly Spider Monkey, symbol of the forest, is the most severely threatened of all. There is only one reported species that is extinct. It was the first environment that the Portuguese colonists encountered over 500 years ago, when it was thought to have had an area of 1,000,000–1,500,000 km 2 (390,000–580,000 sq mi), and stretching an unknown distance inland. The Atlantic Forest (AF) of South America is one of the Earth’s Biodiversity Hotspots with high levels of diversity and endemism 9.The AF extends through more than 1.7 million km 2 … The Atlantic Forest's original extent was 1,233,878 km^2. To be more specific, it denotes the total species present in a specific ecosystem. We present a data set containing information about amphibian communities … Restoring the degraded land with native plants would combat climate change, safeguard exceptional biodiversity and boost Brazil's rural economy. Different from the better known Amazon Forest, the Atlantic Forest, although also a rainforest with an average rainfall of 2000 mm pa, is not so hot as the Amazon, with average temperatures that vary from 14 – 21 C. This contributes to the enormous variety of plants and animals that the forest shelters. Using millions of carefully curated occurrences 66 from over 500 collections around the world, we evaluate which ratio of occurrences inside the Atlantic Forest match species-specific endemism accepted by taxonomic This is because the Atlantic Forest has been found to be one of the biodiversity hotspots … The Atlantic Forest is a global conservation priority due to the Areas are becoming protected to prevent species extinction and further damage from urbanization. Introduction. We used a data set on the distribution of 4378 shrub and tree species across 711 localities. We described the fish assemblage in the estuary of the Guaraguaçu River (one of the largest tributaries of the Paranaguá Bay Estuary, located within Brazil’s Atlantic Forest Biosphere Reserve) from June 2005 to May 2006, and assessed the seasonal and The Atlantic Forest is characterized by a high biodiversity and endemism. The Atlantic Forest (AF) of South America is one of the Earth’s Biodiversity Hotspots with high levels of diver - sity and endemism 9.The AF extends through more than 1.7 million km2 across Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay, and during the last centuries, it has undergone an intense landscape transformation. The Antilles 10. South Africa's Cape floristic region 9. This includes an astonishing diversity of ferns, mosses and epiphytes (“air plants” or plants that attach to other plants), including lianas, orchids and bromeliads. BIODIVERSITY, in general terms, comprises the variability of all life forms present on the Earth including all the fauna and flora species present on the planet. Quantifying this erosion is challenging because ground data on tropical biodiversity and biomass are often sparse. 1). Today less than 12% of the Wallacea (eastern Indonesia) 7. The Atlantic Forest is one of the 36 hotspots for biodiversity conservation worldwide. Of the species in the forest: 55 bird species, 21 mammal species, and 14 amphibian species, are threatened in their habitats. Tropical forests are being deforested worldwide, and the remaining fragments are suffering from biomass and biodiversity erosion. Mauro Galetti and Milton Ribeiro (UNESP, Rio … This biodiversity hotspot originally covered about 1.2 … The city of Rio de Janeiro is located within the hotspot. The Atlantic Forest is home to approximately 70 percent of Brazil's human population, putting tremendous pressure on the hotspot's resources. The Atlantic Forest shelters the largest industrial and silvicultural centers of Brazil, and the most populous urban centers. Click to see full answer. Atlantic Forest – Paraguay, Brazil, Argentina. Atlantic forest is an example of biodiversity hotspot found in South America, and stretches along Brazil’s Atlantic coast, from the northern state of Rio Grande do Norte south to the Rio Grande do Sul (Biodiversity hotspots, 2008). The forest makes up 13% of Brazil's territory and is the third largest major vegetation formation in the country after Amazonia and the Cerrado (an area of woodland savannah in north-east Brazil). Amphibians are among the most threatened vertebrates in the world and this is also true for those inhabiting the Atlantic Forest hotspot, living in ecosystems that are highly degraded and threatened by anthropogenic activities. The two main ecoregions in the hotspot are the coastal Atlantic Forest, the narrow strip of about 50–100 kilometers along the coast, which covers about 20 percent of the region. Abstract Biodiversity hotspots are among some of the habitats most threatened by cli-mate change, and the Brazilian Atlantic forest is no exception. d … Atlantic Forest, Brazil. Brazil's Atlantic Forest Region 4. The Atlantic Forest in Brazil The east coast of Brazil is home to a diversity of species across its mountain ranges and the surrounding forests. The ATLANTIC SERIES aims to make public all sort of Biodiversity data for species occurrence, populantion and community levels. The Atlantic Forest of South America hosts an incredible diversity of flora and fauna that is facing numerous threats due to human activities in the region. 2000).Most of its 8–12% remnants are reduced to secondary fragments (Fundação SOS Mata Atlântica/INPE 2015).This biome spans over 3000 km from 30°S to 7°S and has been regionalized in up to eight biogeographical sub … We estimate that biomass erosion across the 29 Atlantic Forest remnants was equivalent to the loss of 55−70 thousand km2 of forests or 30 US$2.3−2.6 billion in carbon credits. Why is the Atlantic forest important?