Latin American biomes

Latin American biomes

Hosting 40% of the world's biodiversity and a third of the planet's freshwater, Latin America has a central importance in the global fight against climate change and their effects. Learn more about the region's main biomes, their richness and the services they provide.

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The Amazon

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One of the world's most iconic biomes, the Amazon is gigantic in size and in importance.

  • It occupies about 40% of the Brazilian territory, as well as part of the territory of seven other South American countries.
  • It has dozens of rivers and more than a thousand tributaries that form the largest surface freshwater reserve available in the world.
  • It brings together a large part of the planet's biodiversity, including species yet unknown by science.
  • It helps regulate the continent's climate, bringing humidity and rain to other regions through the so-called aerial rivers: immense masses of vapor, formed by the transpiration of forest trees.
  • The masses of humidity, that cross the skies and are carried by the air currents, cause rains to irrigate the Brazilian territory and other South American regions.

Patagonia

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Patagonia brings together three biomes with different characteristics that show the richness of its biodiversity.

  • It is formed by three biomes.
  • It is located at the extreme south of the American continent, the region has territorial extension of approximately 800,000 km² and covers Argentina and Chile.
  • Its first biome is the austral extreme of the Andean Mountain Range, where there are 300 lakes and 4 thousand km² of glaciers that constitute an important freshwater reserve.
  • The second and third biomes are on the other side of the Mountain Range and are a plain of steppes and a steep coast fed by rivers that favor the settlements of populations and fruit production.

Gran Chaco

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The Gran Chaco is a large dry forest biome that keeps sets of genes essential to the survival of the human species.

  • It is the largest dry tropical forest of South America.
  • It has 800 thousand km² of extension.
  • It covers parts of Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay, in addition to a small portion of Brazil.
  • It is the home of endemic and rare species of flora and fauna.

Atlantic Forest

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With exuberant landscapes, the Atlantic Forest is one of the planet's most biodiversified forests.

  • It encompasses a set of forest ecosystems with quite a diversified forest structure and compositions.
  • It shelters about 70% of the Brazilian population in its territory.
  • It has seven of the nine main watershed of Brazil, which supply large cities and help regulate the climate.
  • It shelters the Mantiqueira Mountain, water source that supplies more than 20 million people in the southeastern region of Brazil, where our largest operation is located.

Rainforests

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Known as the Lacandon Forest, it is one of Central America's most extensive tropical forest areas.

  • It extends through 1.9 million hectares, from Chiapas, in Mexico, up to the north of Guatemala.
  • It has six main fauna and flora reserves, among them the Blue Mountains, one of the continent's largest mountains.
  • It was inhabited by the Mayan Empire and today it shelters thousands of ethnic groups.
  • It is one of the sites with the largest number of plant species in the continent, because the climate in this region is always warm and humid.