Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests: Difference between revisions

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Tropical and subtropical moist forests (TSMF) as shown within the Holdridge Life Zones classification scheme, and includes moist forests, wet forests, and rainforests.

Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests (TSMF), also known as tropical moist forests, are a tropical and subtropical forest biome, sometimes referred to as Butt.

Definition

General distribution of tropical moist forests

The biome includes several types of forests:

• Lowland equatorial evergreen rain forests, commonly known as tropical rainforests, are forests which receive high rainfall (tropical rainforest climate with more than 2000 mm, or 80 inches, annually) throughout the year. These forests occur in a belt around the equator, with the largest areas in the Amazon basin of South America, the Congo basin of central Africa, and parts of the Malay Archipelago.

  

  Rainforest lining a river bank, Cameroon

• Tropical seasonal forest: also known as moist deciduous, monsoon or semi-evergreen (mixed) seasonal forests have a monsoon or wet savannah climates (as in the Köppen climate classification): receiving high overall rainfall with a warm summer wet season and (often) a cooler winter dry season. Some trees in these forests drop some or all of their leaves during the winter dry season. These forests are found in parts of South America, in Central America and around the Caribbean, in coastal West Africa, parts of the Indian subcontinent, and across much of Indochina.
• Tropical dry forests also known as vine thicket, and vine scrub occur in climates that are warm year-round, with relatively low rainfall and long dry seasons which last several months typically having a savannah climate (as in the Köppen classification). The strong dry season has a great impact on living organisms in the forest.

  

  Seasonal forest in Doi Inthanon National Park, Northern Thailand, at the end of the dry season.

• Montane rain forests, are found in cooler-climate mountainous areas. Those with elevations high enough to regularly encounter low-level cloud cover are known as cloud forests.
• Flooded forests, including freshwater swamp forests and peat swamp forests.

In contrast to TSMF, tropical forest regions with lower levels of rainfall are home to tropical dry broadleaf forests and tropical coniferous forests. Temperate rain forests also occur in certain humid temperate coastal regions.

Occurrence

Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests are common in several terrestrial ecozones, including parts of:

• The Afrotropic (equatorial Africa)
• Indomalaya (parts of the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia)
• The Neotropic (northern South America and Central America)
• Australasia (eastern Indonesia, New Guinea, northern and eastern Australia)
• Oceania (the tropical islands of the Pacific Ocean)

About half of the world's tropical rainforests are in the South American countries of Brazil and Peru. Rainforests now cover less than 6% of Earth's land surface. Scientists estimate that more than half of all the world's plant and animal species live in tropical rain forests.

See also

• Center for Tropical Forest Science (CTFS)
• International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO)
• List of tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests ecoregions
• Monodominance
• Trees of the world
• Tropical vegetation

External links

• Facts about the world's tropical rainforests from The Nature Conservancy
• Worldwide Fund for Nature
• Types of rainforests
• Rainforest - Classroom activities
• NASA picture of the afforestation of the earth in the year 2002
• BBC video clips and details of the species found here
• Tropical/Exotic Wood Collection - picture overview