Ecological Region

The Serra do Mar coastal forests ecoregion covers a 1000-km long by 100-km wide strip along the Atlantic coast of southeastern Brazil. The ecoregion represents the largest continuous block of montane Atlantic forest and a remarkable center of endemism in South America.

The Sierra Juarez and San Pedro Martir Pine-oak Forests ecoregion is located on the northern part of the Baja Peninsula in northwestern Mexico. The ecoregion covers the higher elevations of these two mountain ranges that are part of the Peninsular Ranges System.

The Sinú Valley dry forests is an ecoregion in the north of Colombia. The region is known for its tremendous richness, in terms of biodiversity, due to the high number of species and level of endemism.

The Southern Andean Yungas is a tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forest ecoregion in the Yungas of southwestern Bolivia and northwestern Argentina. It contains what may be the last of the isolated evergreen forests resulting from Quaternary glaciations.

The Southwest Amazon moist forests cover an extensive area of the Upper Amazon Basin. The inaccessibility of this region has kept most of the habitat intact. Also, there are a number of protected areas, which preserve this extremely biologically rich ecoregion.

The Tepui ecoregion, found in the Guiana Highlands of northern South America, is host to an archipelago of isolated sandstone plateaus and summits, atop nearly vertical escarpments. These dramatic features perforate an extensive matrix of highland savannas and rain forests.

The Upper Paraná Atlantic Forest or "selva parananese" is an ecoregion of the tropical moist forests biome and the South American Atlantic Forest biome. The ecoregion stretches across the borders of southern Brazil, eastern Paraguay and northeastern Argentina.

The Uruguayan savanna is a subtropical grassland and savanna ecoregion that extends from the extreme southern part of the Rio Grande do Sul, a Brazilian state, to include the entire country of Uruguay and a small section of the Argentinean province of Entre Ríos.

The Valdivian temperate forests ecoregion is located in the southern cone of South America. It covers a narrow strip between the western slope of the Andes and the Pacific Ocean. The forests are characterized by their dense understories of bamboos, ferns and evergreen trees.

Várzeas are extensive lowland floodplain areas bordering the Amazon River and its tributaries. Várzea forests are subject to seasonal flooding and may also contain more open, seasonally flooded habitats such as grasslands, including floating meadows.