Tropical biomes have the greatest diversity of plants and animals on the planet. The Cerrado Biome: A Bastion of BiodiversityĪ biome is a community of plants and animals in a large area that shares the same climate and habitat features.
Each year, clearing in the Cerrado is responsible for an estimated 250 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions, about the same as the annual emissions of 53 million cars. If the destruction of the Cerrado continues at current rates, about one-third of the remaining Cerrado’s vegetation could be cleared by 2050.
In fact, habitat losses in the Cerrado due to clear-cutting have been 50% greater than those in the Amazon for the past decade. The situation is not helped by the fact that farmland here can sell for as little as $250 an acre. The Cerrado biome continues to lose ground rapidly to expanding beef and soy production-the biome is responsible for a major part of the country’s food exports. While it covers a quarter of Brazil (it is the size of Germany, France, England, Italy and Spain combined) and happens to be one of the world’s most important ecosystems, it’s always been heavily overshadowed by its more famous neighbor to the north, the Amazon.ĭespite hosting over 5% of the world’s biodiversity and 4,800 species of plants and vertebrates found nowhere else on the planet, the Cerrado is sadly one of the least protected regions in Brazil. In the Cerrado, national parks cover only 7.5% of the natural biome area, whereas, in the Amazon, they cover 46%. It is covered in sun-drenched grasslands amid both humid and dry forests filled with gorgeous tree species such as sucupira, copaiba and golden trumpet. In between the Amazon, Atlantic Forests and the Pantanal lies the Cerrado biome in the highlands of Central Brazil-the largest savanna region in all of South America.
0 kommentar(er)
