1.
Pernambuco
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Pernambuco is a state of Brazil, located in the Northeast region of the country. The state of Pernambuco also includes the archipelago Fernando de Noronha and its capital and largest city, Recife, is one of the most important economic and urban hubs in the country. As of 2013 estimates, Recifes metropolitan area is the fifth most populous in the country, in 1982 the city of Olinda, the second oldest city in Brazil, was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Recife, the capital and Olinda have one of the most traditional Brazilian Carnivals. Both have architecture of Portugal, with centuries-old casarões and churches, kilometers of beaches, the proximity of the equator guarantees sunshine throughout the year, with average temperatures of 26 °C. Pernambuco comprises a narrow coastal zone, a high inland plateau. Ranges of these form the boundary lines with three states–the Serra dos Irmãos and Serra Vermelha with Piauí, the Serra do Araripe with Ceará. The coastal area is fertile, and was covered by the humid Pernambuco coastal forests. It is now place to extensive sugar cane plantations and it has a hot, humid climate, relieved to some extent by the south-east trade winds. The middle zone, called the region, has a drier climate and lighter vegetation, including the semi-deciduous Pernambuco interior forests. The inland region, called the sertão is high, stony, and dry, the climate is characterized by hot days and cool nights. There are two defined seasons, a rainy season from March to June, and a dry season for the remaining months. The interior of the state is covered mostly by the dry thorny scrub vegetation called caatinga, the Rio São Francisco is the main water source for this area. The climate is mild in the countryside of the state because of the Borborema Plateau. Some towns are located more than 1000 meters above sea level, the island of Fernando de Noronha in the Atlantic Ocean,535 km northeast of Recife, has been part of Pernambuco since 1988. The rivers of the include a number of small plateau streams flowing southward to the São Francisco River. The former are the Moxotó, Ema, Pajeú, Terra Nova, Brigida, Boa Vista and Pontai, a large tributary of the Uná, the Rio Jacuhipe, forms part of the boundary line with Alagoas. Originally inhabited by tribes of Tupi-Guarani speaking indigenous peoples, Pernambuco was first settled by the Portuguese in the 16th century
2.
Brazil
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Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. As the worlds fifth-largest country by area and population, it is the largest country to have Portuguese as an official language. Its Amazon River basin includes a vast tropical forest, home to wildlife, a variety of ecological systems. This unique environmental heritage makes Brazil one of 17 megadiverse countries, Brazil was inhabited by numerous tribal nations prior to the landing in 1500 of explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral, who claimed the area for the Portuguese Empire. Brazil remained a Portuguese colony until 1808, when the capital of the empire was transferred from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro, in 1815, the colony was elevated to the rank of kingdom upon the formation of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves. Independence was achieved in 1822 with the creation of the Empire of Brazil, a state governed under a constitutional monarchy. The ratification of the first constitution in 1824 led to the formation of a bicameral legislature, the country became a presidential republic in 1889 following a military coup détat. An authoritarian military junta came to power in 1964 and ruled until 1985, Brazils current constitution, formulated in 1988, defines it as a democratic federal republic. The federation is composed of the union of the Federal District, the 26 states, Brazils economy is the worlds ninth-largest by nominal GDP and seventh-largest by GDP as of 2015. A member of the BRICS group, Brazil until 2010 had one of the worlds fastest growing economies, with its economic reforms giving the country new international recognition. Brazils national development bank plays an important role for the economic growth. Brazil is a member of the United Nations, the G20, BRICS, Unasul, Mercosul, Organization of American States, Organization of Ibero-American States, CPLP. Brazil is a power in Latin America and a middle power in international affairs. One of the worlds major breadbaskets, Brazil has been the largest producer of coffee for the last 150 years and it is likely that the word Brazil comes from the Portuguese word for brazilwood, a tree that once grew plentifully along the Brazilian coast. In Portuguese, brazilwood is called pau-brasil, with the word brasil commonly given the etymology red like an ember, formed from Latin brasa and the suffix -il. As brazilwood produces a red dye, it was highly valued by the European cloth industry and was the earliest commercially exploited product from Brazil. The popular appellation eclipsed and eventually supplanted the official Portuguese name, early sailors sometimes also called it the Land of Parrots. In the Guarani language, a language of Paraguay, Brazil is called Pindorama
3.
South America
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South America is a continent located in the western hemisphere, mostly in the southern hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the northern hemisphere. It may also be considered a subcontinent of the Americas, which is the used in nations that speak Romance languages. The reference to South America instead of other regions has increased in the last decades due to changing geopolitical dynamics. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east by the Atlantic Ocean, North America and it includes twelve sovereign states, a part of France, and a non-sovereign area. In addition to this, the ABC islands of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Trinidad and Tobago, South America has an area of 17,840,000 square kilometers. Its population as of 2005 has been estimated at more than 371,090,000, South America ranks fourth in area and fifth in population. Brazil is by far the most populous South American country, with more than half of the population, followed by Colombia, Argentina, Venezuela. In recent decades Brazil has also concentrated half of the regions GDP and has become a first regional power, most of the population lives near the continents western or eastern coasts while the interior and the far south are sparsely populated. Most of the continent lies in the tropics, the continents cultural and ethnic outlook has its origin with the interaction of indigenous peoples with European conquerors and immigrants and, more locally, with African slaves. Given a long history of colonialism, the majority of South Americans speak Portuguese or Spanish. South America occupies the portion of the Americas. The continent is delimited on the northwest by the Darién watershed along the Colombia–Panama border. Almost all of mainland South America sits on the South American Plate, South Americas major mineral resources are gold, silver, copper, iron ore, tin, and petroleum. These resources found in South America have brought high income to its countries especially in times of war or of rapid growth by industrialized countries elsewhere. However, the concentration in producing one major export commodity often has hindered the development of diversified economies and this is leading to efforts to diversify production to drive away from staying as economies dedicated to one major export. South America is one of the most biodiverse continents on earth, South America is home to many interesting and unique species of animals including the llama, anaconda, piranha, jaguar, vicuña, and tapir. The Amazon rainforests possess high biodiversity, containing a proportion of the Earths species. Brazil is the largest country in South America, encompassing around half of the land area
4.
Satellite imagery
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Satellite imagery consists of images of Earth or other planets collected by satellites. Imaging satellites are operated by governments and businesses around the world, Satellite imaging companies sell images under licence. Images are licensed to governments and businesses such as Apple Maps, the first images from space were taken on sub-orbital flights. The U. S-launched V-2 flight on October 24,1946 took one image every 1.5 seconds. With an apogee of 65 miles, these photos were from five times higher than the previous record, the first satellite photographs of Earth were made on August 14,1959 by the U. S. The first satellite photographs of the Moon might have made on October 6,1959 by the Soviet satellite Luna 3. The Blue Marble photograph was taken from space in 1972, and has very popular in the media. Also in 1972 the United States started the Landsat program, the largest program for acquisition of imagery of Earth from space, Landsat Data Continuity Mission, the most recent Landsat satellite, was launched on 11 February 2013. In 1977, the first real time satellite imagery was acquired by the United Statess KH-11 satellite system, all satellite images produced by NASA are published by NASA Earth Observatory and are freely available to the public. Several other countries have satellite imaging programs, and a collaborative European effort launched the ERS, there are also private companies that provide commercial satellite imagery. Images can be in visible colours and in other spectra, there are also elevation maps, usually made by radar images. Interpretation and analysis of imagery is conducted using specialized remote sensing applications. There are four types of resolution when discussing satellite imagery in remote sensing, spatial, spectral, temporal, and radiometric. GSD is a term containing the optical and systemic noise sources and is useful for comparing how well one sensor can see an object on the ground within a single pixel. For example, the GSD of Landsat is ~30m, which means the smallest unit that maps to a single pixel within an image is ~30m x 30m, the latest commercial satellite has a GSD of 0.41 m. This compares to a 0.3 m resolution obtained by some early military film based Reconnaissance satellite such as Corona, the resolution of satellite images varies depending on the instrument used and the altitude of the satellites orbit. For example, the Landsat archive offers repeated imagery at 30 meter resolution for the planet, Landsat 7 has an average return period of 16 days. For many smaller areas, images with resolution as high as 41 cm can be available, Satellite imagery is sometimes supplemented with aerial photography, which has higher resolution, but is more expensive per square meter
5.
NASA
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President Dwight D. Eisenhower established NASA in 1958 with a distinctly civilian orientation encouraging peaceful applications in space science. The National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed on July 29,1958, disestablishing NASAs predecessor, the new agency became operational on October 1,1958. Since that time, most US space exploration efforts have led by NASA, including the Apollo Moon landing missions, the Skylab space station. Currently, NASA is supporting the International Space Station and is overseeing the development of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, the agency is also responsible for the Launch Services Program which provides oversight of launch operations and countdown management for unmanned NASA launches. NASA shares data with various national and international such as from the Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite. Since 2011, NASA has been criticized for low cost efficiency, from 1946, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics had been experimenting with rocket planes such as the supersonic Bell X-1. In the early 1950s, there was challenge to launch a satellite for the International Geophysical Year. An effort for this was the American Project Vanguard, after the Soviet launch of the worlds first artificial satellite on October 4,1957, the attention of the United States turned toward its own fledgling space efforts. This led to an agreement that a new federal agency based on NACA was needed to conduct all non-military activity in space. The Advanced Research Projects Agency was created in February 1958 to develop technology for military application. On July 29,1958, Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, a NASA seal was approved by President Eisenhower in 1959. Elements of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency and the United States Naval Research Laboratory were incorporated into NASA, earlier research efforts within the US Air Force and many of ARPAs early space programs were also transferred to NASA. In December 1958, NASA gained control of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA has conducted many manned and unmanned spaceflight programs throughout its history. Some missions include both manned and unmanned aspects, such as the Galileo probe, which was deployed by astronauts in Earth orbit before being sent unmanned to Jupiter, the experimental rocket-powered aircraft programs started by NACA were extended by NASA as support for manned spaceflight. This was followed by a space capsule program, and in turn by a two-man capsule program. This goal was met in 1969 by the Apollo program, however, reduction of the perceived threat and changing political priorities almost immediately caused the termination of most of these plans. NASA turned its attention to an Apollo-derived temporary space laboratory, to date, NASA has launched a total of 166 manned space missions on rockets, and thirteen X-15 rocket flights above the USAF definition of spaceflight altitude,260,000 feet. The X-15 was an NACA experimental rocket-powered hypersonic research aircraft, developed in conjunction with the US Air Force, the design featured a slender fuselage with fairings along the side containing fuel and early computerized control systems
6.
Ecoregion
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An ecoregion is an ecologically and geographically defined area that is smaller than a bioregion, which in turn is smaller than an ecozone. All three of these are less or greater than an ecosystem. Ecoregions cover relatively large areas of land or water, and contain characteristic, the biodiversity of flora, fauna and ecosystems that characterise an ecoregion tends to be distinct from that of other ecoregions. Three caveats are appropriate for all bio-geographic mapping approaches, firstly, no single bio-geographic framework is optimal for all taxa. Ecoregions reflect the best compromise for as many taxa as possible, secondly, ecoregion boundaries rarely form abrupt edges, rather, ecotones and mosaic habitats bound them. Thirdly, most ecoregions contain habitats that differ from their assigned biome, biogeographic provinces may originate due to various barriers. Some physical, some climatic and some ocean chemical related, the history of the term is somewhat vague as it was used in many contexts, forest classifications, biome classifications, biogeographic classifications, etc. The concept of ecoregion of Bailey gives more importance to ecological criteria, while the WWF concept gives more importance to biogeography, there is significant, but not absolute, spatial correlation among these characteristics, making the delineation of ecoregions an imperfect science. Such transition zones are called ecotones, Ecoregions can be categorized using an algorithmic approach or a holistic, “weight-of-evidence” approach where the importance of various factors may vary. An example of the approach is Robert Bailey’s work for the U. S. The intended purpose of ecoregion delineation may affect the method used, according to WWF, the boundaries of an ecoregion approximate the original extent of the natural communities prior to any major recent disruptions or changes. WWF has identified 867 terrestrial ecoregions, and approximately 450 freshwater ecoregions across the Earth, the use of the term ecoregion is an outgrowth of a surge of interest in ecosystems and their functioning. In particular, there is awareness of issues relating to spatial scale in the study and it is widely recognized that interlinked ecosystems combine to form a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. The Global 200 is the list of ecoregions identified by WWF as priorities for conservation, Terrestrial ecoregions are land ecoregions, as distinct from freshwater and marine ecoregions. In this context, terrestrial is used to mean of land, WWF ecologists currently divide the land surface of the Earth into 8 major ecozones containing 867 smaller terrestrial ecoregions. The WWF effort is a synthesis of previous efforts to define. Many consider this classification to be decisive, and some propose these as stable borders for bioregional democracy initiatives. The eight terrestrial ecozones follow the major floral and faunal boundaries, identified by botanists and zoologists, ecozone boundaries generally follow continental boundaries, or major barriers to plant and animal distribution, like the Himalayas and the Sahara
7.
Northeast Region, Brazil
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The Northeast Region of Brazil is one of the five official and political regions of the country according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics. For the socio-geographic area see Nordeste, of Brazils twenty-six states, it comprises nine, Maranhão, Piauí, Ceará, Rio Grande do Norte, Paraíba, Pernambuco, Alagoas, Sergipe and Bahia, along with the Fernando de Noronha archipelago. Chiefly known as Nordeste in Brazil, this region was the first to be discovered and colonized by the Portuguese and other European peoples, Nordestes dialects and rich culture, including its folklore, cuisines, music and literature, became the most easily distinguishable across the country. To this day, Nordeste is widely recognized for its history and culture, Nordeste stretches from the Atlantic seaboard in the northeast and southeast, northwest and west to the Amazon Basin and south through the Espinhaço highlands in southern Bahia. It encloses the São Francisco River and drainage basin, which were instrumental in the exploration, settlement, the region lies entirely within the earths tropical zone and encompasses Caatinga, Atlantic Forest and part of the Cerrado ecoregions. The climate is hot and semi-arid, varying from xeric in Caatinga, to mesic in Cerrado and hydric in the Atlantic Forest. The Northeast Region represents 18% of Brazilian territory, has a population of 53.6 million people, 28% of the population of the country. Nearly three quarters of the live in urban areas clustered along the Atlantic coast and about 15 million people live in the hinterland. It is a region, 58% of the population lives in poverty. Nordeste has nine international airports, and the region has the second largest number of passengers in Brazil, the Zona da Mata comprises the rainsforest zones of Nordeste in the humid eastern coast, where the regions largest capital cities are also located. The forest area was larger before suffering from centuries of deforestation and exploration. For many years, sugar cultivation in this region was the mainstay of Brazils economy. The sugar cane is cultivated on large estates and the owners of these had, since the escarpment does not generate any further rainfall on its slopes from the lifting of the trade winds, annual rainfall decreases steadily inland. After a relatively short distance, there is no longer enough rainfall to tropical rainforest. This transitional zone is known as the agreste and because it is located on the escarpment, was not generally used whilst flatter land was abundant. In Portuguese, the word sertão first referred to the vast hinterlands of Asia, in Brazil, the geographical term referred to backlands away from the Atlantic coastal regions where the Portuguese first settled in South America in the early sixteenth century. Geographically, the Sertão consists mainly of low uplands that form part of the Brazilian Highlands, in the north, the Sertão extends to the northern coastal plains of Rio Grande do Norte state, whilst in the south it fades out in the northern fringe of Minas Gerais. Because the Sertão lies close to the equator, temperatures remain nearly uniform throughout the year and are typically tropical, however, the sertão is distinctive in its low rainfall compared to other areas of Brazil
8.
Tupian languages
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The Tupi or Tupian language family comprises some 70 languages spoken in South America, of which the best known are Tupi proper and Guarani. Rodrigues considers the Proto-Tupian urheimat to be somewhere between the Guaporé and Aripuanã rivers, in the Madeira River basin, much of this area corresponds to the modern-day state of Rondônia, Brazil. 5 of the 10 Tupian branches are found in area, as well as some Tupi–Guarani languages, making it the probable urheimat of these languages. Rodrigues believes the Proto-Tupian language dates back to around 5,000 B. P, when the Portuguese arrived in Brazil, they found that wherever they went along the vast coast of this newly discovered land, most natives spoke similar languages. Jesuit missionaries took advantage of similarities, systematizing common standards then named línguas gerais. However, the Tupi family also comprises other languages, today, Guarani has 7 million speakers, and is one of the official languages of Paraguay. The Tupian family also includes several other languages with fewer speakers and these share irregular morphology with the Ge and Carib families, and Ribeiro connects them all as a Je–Tupi–Carib family. Rodrigues & Cabral list 10 branches of Tupian, which cluster into Western Tupian, within Western and Eastern Tupian, the most divergent branches are listed first, followed by the core branches. In Ana Suelly Arruda Câmara Cabral, Aryon DallIgna Rodrigues, linguas e culturas Tupi, p. 167-203. Swadesh lists of Tupi–Guarani basic vocabulary words
9.
Tropical zone
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The tropics are a region of the Earth surrounding the equator. The tropics are also referred to as the zone and the torrid zone. The tropics include all the areas on the Earth where the Sun is at a point directly overhead at least once during the solar year. The tropics are distinguished from the climatic and biomatic regions of Earth, which are the middle latitudes. Tropical is sometimes used in a sense for a tropical climate to mean warm to hot and moist year-round. Many tropical areas have a dry and wet season, the wet season, rainy season or green season, is the time of year, ranging from one or more months, when most of the average annual rainfall in a region falls. Areas with wet seasons are disseminated across portions of the tropics and subtropics, under the Köppen climate classification, for tropical climates, a wet season month is defined as a month where average precipitation is 60 millimetres or more. Tropical rainforests technically do not have dry or wet seasons, since their rainfall is distributed through the year. When the wet season occurs during the season, or summer, precipitation falls mainly during the late afternoon. The wet season is a time when air quality improves, freshwater quality improves and vegetation grows significantly, floods cause rivers to overflow their banks, and some animals to retreat to higher ground. Soil nutrients diminish and erosion increases, the incidence of malaria increases in areas where the rainy season coincides with high temperatures. Animals have adaptation and survival strategies for the wetter regime, unfortunately, the previous dry season leads to food shortages into the wet season, as the crops have yet to mature. Regions within the tropics may well not have a tropical climate, there are alpine tundra and snow-capped peaks, including Mauna Kea, Mount Kilimanjaro, and the Andes as far south as the northernmost parts of Chile and Argentina. Under the Köppen climate classification, much of the area within the tropics is classed not as tropical but as dry including the Sahara Desert. Tropical plants and animals are those native to the tropics. Tropical ecosystems may consist of rainforests, dry forests, spiny forests, desert. There are often significant areas of biodiversity, and species present, particularly in rainforests. In biogeography, the tropics are divided into Paleotropics and Neotropics, together, they are sometimes referred to as the Pantropic
10.
Amazon basin
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The Amazon basin is the part of South America drained by the Amazon River and its tributaries. The Amazon drainage basin covers an area of about 7,500,000 km2 and it is located in the countries of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela. Most of the basin is covered by the Amazon Rainforest, also known as Amazonia, with a 5,500,000 km2 area of dense tropical forest, this is the largest rainforest in the world. The Amazon River rises in the Andes Mountains at the west of the basin with its tributary the Marañón River in Peru. It is usually considered to be the second longest river in the world, however, a team of Brazilian scientists has claimed that the Amazon is the longest river in the world. It covers about 6,400 km before draining into the Atlantic Ocean, the Amazon and its tributaries form the largest volume of water. The Amazon accounts for about 20% of the water carried to the oceans by rivers. Some of the Amazon rainforests are deforested because of the increasing of cattle ranches, the highest point in the watershed of the Amazon is the peak of Yerupajá at 6,635 m. The Amazon basin formerly flowed west to Pacific Ocean until the Andes formed, politically the basin is divided into the Brazilian Amazônia Legal, the Peruvian Amazon, the Amazon region of Colombia and parts of Bolivia, Ecuador and the Venezuelan state of Amazonas. Plant growth is dense and its variety of inhabitants is comparatively high due to the heavy rainfall. Little sunlight reaches the ground due to the roof canopy by plants. The ground remains dark and damp and only shade tolerant vegetation will grow here, orchids and bromeliads exploit trees and other plants to get closer to the sunlight. They grow hanging onto the branches or tree trunks with aerial roots, not as parasites, species of tropical trees native to the Amazon include Brazil nut, rubber tree and Assai palm. More than 1,400 species of mammals are found in the Amazon and its larger mammals include the jaguar, ocelot, capybara and South American tapir. About 1500 bird species inhabit the Amazon Basin, the biodiversity of the Amazon and the sheer number of diverse bird species is given by the number of different bird families that reside in these humid forests. An example of such would be the family, to which the Guianan cock-of-the-rock belong. Birds such as toucans, and hummingbirds are found here. Macaws are famous for gathering by the hundreds along the cliffs of the Amazon River
11.
Pantanal
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The Pantanal is a natural region encompassing the worlds largest tropical wetland area. It is located mostly within the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul and it sprawls over an area estimated at between 140,000 and 195,000 square kilometres. Various subregional ecosystems exist, each with distinct hydrological, geological and ecological characteristics, the name Pantanal comes from the Portuguese word pântano, meaning wetland, bog, swamp, quagmire or marsh. By comparison, the Brazilian highlands are locally referred to as the planalto, plateau or, literally, the Pantanal is a huge, gently-sloped basin that receives runoff from the upland areas and slowly releases the water through the Paraguay River and tributaries. The formation is a result of the large, concave pre-Andean depression of the earths crust and this area is also one of the distinct physiographic provinces of the larger Parana-Paraguay Plain area. The Pantanal is bounded by the Chiquitano dry forests to the west and northwest, by the Arid Chaco dry forests to the southwest, the Cerrado savannas lie to the north, east and southeast. The Pantanal has a yearly rainfall of 1, 000–1,400 mm. Its average temperature is 25 °C, but temperatures can fluctuate from 0 to 40 °C, floodplain ecosystems such as the Pantanal are defined by their seasonal inundation and desiccation. They shift between phases of standing water and phases of dry soil, when the table can be well below the root region. Soils range from high levels of sand in areas to higher amounts of clay. Elevation of the Pantanal ranges from 80 to 150 m above sea level, annual rainfall over the flood basin is between 1,000 and 1,500 mm, with most rainfall occurring between November and March. In the Paraguay River portion of the Pantanal, water levels rise between two meters to five meters seasonally, water fluctuations in other parts of the Pantanal are less than this. Flood waters tend to flow due to the low gradients. When rising river waters first contact previously dry soil, the waters become oxygen-depleted, many natural fish kills can occur if there are no oxygenated water refuges available. Forests usually occur at altitudes of the region, while grasslands cover the seasonally inundated areas. The key limiting factors for growth are inundation and, even more importantly, the Pantanal ecosystem is home to 3500 known plant species. The Pantanal ecosystem is thought to be home to 1000 bird species,400 fish species,300 mammalian species,480 reptile species. The apple snail is a species in Pantanals ecosystem
12.
Cerrado
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The Cerrado is a vast tropical savanna ecoregion of Brazil, particularly in the states of Goiás, Mato Grosso do Sul, Mato Grosso, Tocantins and Minas Gerais. The Cerrado biome core areas are the plateaus in the center of Brazil, the main habitat types of the Cerrado include, forest savanna, wooded savanna, park savanna and gramineous-woody savanna. Savanna wetlands and gallery forests are also included, the second largest of Brazils major habitat types, after the Amazonian rainforest, the Cerrado accounts for a full 21 percent of the countrys land area. Since then vast amounts of research have proved that the Cerrado is one of the richest of all tropical regions and has high levels of endemism. There are nearly 200 species of mammal in the Cerrado, though only 14 are endemic, the Cerrados climate is typical of the rather moister savanna regions of the world, with a semi-humid tropical climate. The Cerrado is limited to two dominant seasons throughout the year, wet and dry, annual temperatures for the Cerrado average between 22 and 27 °C and average precipitation between 800–2000 mm for over 90% of the area. This ecoregion has a strong dry season during the southern winter. The Cerrado is characterized by unique vegetation types and it is composed of a shifting mosaic of habitats, with the savanna-like cerrado itself on well-drained areas between strips of gallery forest which occur along streams. The savanna portion of the Cerrado is heterogeneous in terms of canopy cover, goodland divided the Cerrado into four categories ranging from least to most canopy cover, campo sujo, campo cerrado, cerrado sensu stricto and cerradao. Probably around 800 species of trees are found in the Cerrado, among the most diverse families of trees in the Cerrado are the Leguminosae, Malpighiaceae, Myrtaceae, Melastomataceae and Rubiaceae. Much of the Cerrado is dominated by the Vochysiaceae due to the abundance of three species in the genus Qualea, the herbaceous layer usually reaches about 60 cm in height and is composed mainly of the Poaceae, Cyperaceae, Leguminosae, Compositae, Myrtaceae and Rubiaceae. Much of the vegetation in the forests is similar to nearby rainforest, however. Soil fertility, fire regime and hydrology are thought to be most influential in determining Cerrado vegetation, Cerrado soils are always well-drained and most are oxisols with low pH and low calcium and magnesium. The amount of potassium, nitrogen and phosphorus has been found to be correlated with tree trunk basal area in Cerrado habitats. Cerrado vegetation is believed to be ancient, stretching back perhaps as far in a prototypic form during the Cretaceous before Africa, a dynamic expansion and contraction between cerrado and Amazonian rainforest has probably occurred historically, with expansion of the Cerrado during glacial periods like the Pleistocene. These processes and the resulting fragmentation have probably contributed to the species richness both of the Cerrado and of the Amazonian rainforest. The insects of the Cerrado are relatively understudied, a yearlong survey of the Cerrado at one reserve in Brazil found that the orders Coleoptera, Hymenoptera, Diptera and Isoptera accounted for 89. 5% of all captures. The Cerrado also supports high density of leaf cutter ant nests which are very diverse
13.
Atlantic Forest
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The Atlantic Forest is characterized by a high species diversity and endemism. Restinga Forests are generally closed canopy short forests with tree density, open Restinga is an open, savanna-like formation with scattered clumps of small trees and shrubs and an extensive layer of herbs, grasses, and sedges. Seasonal tropical moist forests may receive more than 2000 mm of rain a year and these include Tropical Moist, Lowland Forests, Submontane Forest, and Montane Forests. Tabuleiro forests are found over very moist clay soils and Tabuleiro Savannas occur over faster-draining sand soils and these are humid areas that rely on water vapor from the ocean. Further inland are the Atlantic dry forests, which form a transition between the arid Caatinga to the northeast and the Cerrado savannas to the east. These forests are lower in stature, more open, with abundance of deciduous trees. These forests have between 700–1600 mm of precipitation annually with a dry season. This includes Deciduous and Semideciduous Seasonal Forest each with their own lowland, Montane forests are higher altitude wet forests across mountains and plateaus of southern Brazil. The Mussununga forests occur in southern Bahia and northern Espirito Santo states, the Mussununga ecosystem ranges from grasslands to woodlands associated with sandy spodosols. The word Mussununga is Amerindian Tupi-Guarani meaning soft and wet white sand, shrubby montane savannas occur at the highest elevations, also called Campo rupestre. The Atlantic Forest is unusual in that it extends as a tropical forest to latitudes as far as 24°S. This is because the trade winds produce precipitation throughout the southern winter, in fact, the northern Zona da Mata of northeastern Brazil receives much more rainfall between May and August than during the southern summer. The Atlantic forest is a rain forest, some maps even suggest the forest actually survived in moist pockets well away from the coastline where its endemic rainforest species mixed with much cooler-climate species. Unlike refugia for equatorial rainforests, the refuges for the Atlantic Forest have never been the product of detailed identification, despite so little forest remaining, the Atlantic Forest remains extraordinarily lush in biodiversity and endemic species, many of which are threatened with extinction. Approximately 40 percent of its plants and up 60 percent of its vertebrates are endemic species. The official threatened species list of Brazil contains over 140 terrestrial mammal species found in Atlantic Forest, in Paraguay there are 35 species listed as threatened, and 22 species are listed as threatened in the interior portion of the Atlantic Forest of Argentina. Nearly 250 species of amphibians, birds, and mammals have become extinct due to the result of activity in the past 400 years. Over 11,000 species of plants and animals are considered threatened today in the Atlantic Forest, over 52% of the tree species and 92% of the amphibians are endemic to this area
14.
Pampas
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These vast plains are a natural region only interrupted by the low Ventana and Tandil hills near Bahía Blanca and Tandil, with a height of 1,300 m and 500 m, respectively. The climate is warm, with precipitation of 600 to 1,200 mm, more or less evenly distributed through the year and this area is also one of the distinct physiography provinces of the larger Paraná-Paraguay Plain division. These plains contain unique wildlife because of the different terrains around it, some of this wildlife includes the rhea, the pampas deer, several species of armadillos, the pampas fox, the white-eared opossum, the elegant crested tinamou, and several other species. The climate of the Pampas is generally temperate, gradually giving way to a subtropical climate in the north. Summer temperatures are more uniform than winter temperatures, generally ranging from 28 to 33 °C during the day, however, most cities in the Pampas occasionally have high temperatures that push 38 °C. This occurs when a warm, dry, northerly wind blows from southern Brazil, autumn arrives gradually in March, and peaks in April and May. In April, highs range from 20 to 25 °C and lows from 9 to 13 °C, the first frosts arrive in mid-April in the south, and in late May or early June in the north. Winters are generally mild, although cold waves do occur, normal temperatures range from 12 to 19 °C during the day, and from 1 to 6 °C at night. With strong northerly winds, days of over 25 °C can be recorded almost everywhere, whereas during cold waves, frost occurs everywhere in the Pampas, although it is much more frequent in the southwest, and less so around the Parana and Uruguay Rivers. Temperatures under −5 °C can occur everywhere, whereas values of −10 °C or lower are confined to the south, snow never falls in the northernmost third, and is rare and light elsewhere, except for exceptional events where depths have reached 30 cm. Springs are very variable, it is warmer than fall in most areas, violent storms are more common, as well as wide temperature variations, days of 35 °C can give way to nights of under 5 °C or even frost, all within only a few days. Precipitation ranges from 1,200 mm in the northeast, to about 500 mm in the southern and western edges. In the west, it is seasonal, with some places recording averages of 120 mm monthly in the summer. The eastern areas have small peaks in the fall and in the spring, however, where summer rain falls as short, heavy storms, winter rain falls mostly as cold drizzle, so that the amount of rainy days is fairly constant. Very intense thunderstorms are common in the spring and summer, and it has among the most frequent lightning, the severe thunderstorms produce intense hailstorms, and both floods and flash floods, as well as the most consistently active tornado region outside the central and southeastern US. Frequent wildfires ensure that only small plants such as grasses flourish, the dominant vegetation types are grassy prairie and grass steppe in which numerous species of the grass genus Stipa are particularly conspicuous. Pampas grass is a species of the Pampas. Vegetation typically includes perennial grasses and herbs, different strata of grasses occur because of gradients of water availability
15.
Rio Grande do Norte
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Rio Grande do Norte is one of the states of Brazil, located in the northeastern region of the country, occupying the northeasternmost tip of the South American continent. Because of its position, Rio Grande do Norte has a strategic importance. The capital and largest city is Natal and it is the land of the folklorist Luís da Câmara Cascudo and, according to NASA, it has the purest air in the Americas. Its 410 km of sand, much sun, coconut palms, Rocas Atoll, the only such feature in the Atlantic Ocean, is part of the state. The state is also closest to the archipelago of Fernando de Noronha, Rio Grande do Norte is dominated by its coastline. The state is famed for its beaches and sand dunes, and the air is, according to NASA, two climates predominate, humid tropical, in the oriental littoral, and semi-arid, in the remaining of the State. There are also many mangroves in the state, and the interior is dominated by rainforest, Rocas Atoll in the Atlantic Ocean,260 km Northeast of Natal, also belongs to the state of Rio Grande do Norte. It is contained in the fully protected Atol das Rocas Biological Reserve, the first European to reach the region may have been the Spaniard Alonso de Ojeda in 1499. The Vespucci expedition also named the Potengi river, whose considerably large mouth contrasted with the bodies of water, Rio Grande, after which the Captaincy, Province. For decades thereafter, no permanent European settlement was established in the area, in the 16th century, it was explored by French pirates in search for brazilwood. In 1598, the Portuguese built the Forte dos Reis Magos and, in the following year, rasing cattle and sugarcane plantation lifted the local development and economy. In 1633, the became a battleground between the expansionist Portuguese, seeking to take more land for their Brazilian territories, and the Dutch. After a short period of peace and prosperity in Olinda and Recife, the prices went down in the market of Amsterdam. The economic problems led the Portuguese settlers and native Brazilians to revolt against the Dutch in what is today as the massacres of Cunhaú. The governor of Bahia promised new Portuguese troops, but most of the rebels were Africans and Amerindians, in 1654, the Dutch were finally cast out. During World War II, Rio Grande do Norte was used as an Allied airbase from which to air raids on German-occupied North Africa. In 1964, Latin Americas first space launch site was constructed in Rio Grande do Norte, Barreira do Inferno, which was often referred to as the Brazilian NASA. The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics estimates that the population of Rio Grande do Norte was 3,168,133 on December 1,2010, multiracial people make up 52. 48% of the total population
16.
Alagoas
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Alagoas is one of the 27 states of Brazil and is situated in the eastern part of the Northeast Region. It borders, Pernambuco, Sergipe, Bahia, and the Atlantic Ocean and it occupies an area of 27,767 km², being slightly larger than Haiti. Its capital is the city of Maceió, next to last Brazilian state in area and 16th in population, it is one of the greatest producers of sugarcane and coconuts in the country and has an economy based on cattle raising. Land of the sururu, lagoon shellfish which serves as food for the coastal population, initially, the Alagoano territory constituted the southern part of the Captaincy of Pernambuco and only gained its autonomy in 1817. Its occupation pushed the expansion of the captaincys sugarcane farming, which required new areas of cultivation, thus arose Porto Calvo, Alagoas and Penedo, nuclei which guided the colonization, economic, and social life of the region for a long time. The Dutch invasion in Pernambuco was extended to Alagoas in 1631, the invaders were expelled in 1645, after intense fighting in Porto Calvo, leaving the economy totally disorganized. The escape of African slaves during the Dutch invasion created a labour shortage problem on the sugarcane plantations. Grouped in villages called quilombos, the Africans were only completely dominated at the end of the 17th century with the destruction of the most important quilombo, during the empire, the separatist and republican movement the Confederation of the Equator received the support of noteworthy Alagoano figures. Throughout the 1840s, political life was marked by the conflict between the lisos, conservatives, and the cabeludos, liberals, delmiro Gouveia was killed in October 1917 in circumstances still unclarified, after being pressured, according to rumor, to sell his factory to competing foreign firms. After his death, his machines would be destroyed and thrown into Paulo Afonso Falls, the suffix -ano is characteristic of Brazil, pernambucano, alagoano, sergipano, baiano, goiano, and later acriano. The states name originates with the lakes along its coast near the city of Maceió, the coast is bordered by fringing reefs and many fine beaches. This is the area dominated by sugar cane. Still farther inland lies the Sertão of the Northeast region of the nation, the Sertão is a high dry region dominated by scrub that is often thorn-filled and sometimes toxic, the caatinga. This area and its people are famed in legend and song and it is the land of the cowboy who is clad from head to toe with very thick leather to avoid the sharp vegetation. During the first three centuries of its history, Alagoas was part of the captaincy of Pernambuco, only changing into an independent captaincy in 1817. Initially, in the first years of the 16th century, Alagoas settlement went on slowly, in the period of the 16th and 17th centuries, French pirates invaded its territory attracted by the commerce of Brazil wood. Some time later, Duarte Coelho, owner of the captaincy of Pernambuco, gave the control of the back to the Portuguese. In 1630, the territory was taken by the Dutch, whose interest was to manage the commerce of sugarcane in most parts of the region of Brazil
17.
Sergipe
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Sergipe is the smallest state of the Brazilian Federation, located on the northeastern Atlantic coast of the country. It borders on two states, Bahia to the south and west and Alagoas to the north. Aracaju is the capital and the largest city in the state, as with most of the states in northeastern Brazil, inland Sergipe is almost entirely savanna, and its coastline is characterized by mangroves, swamps and sandy beaches. A small strip of tropical rainforest runs down the coast, the São Francisco River forms its northern boundary, and the drainage of the northern part of the state is northward and eastward to that river. The southern half of the state slopes eastward and is drained directly into the Atlantic through a number of rivers, the largest of which are the Irapiranga, the Real. These streams are navigable for short distances, but are obstructed by sandbars at their mouths, because of these, there are no good ports on the coast. The surface of the state resembles, in part, that of Bahia, with a zone of forested lands near the coast and beyond this zone lies a higher zone of rough open country. There is a belt along the coast, and the western frontier is slightly mountainous. The land in between is very fertile, especially in the region where the rainfall is abundant. Further inland, the year is divided into wet and dry seasons with occasional prolonged droughts and these are pastoral areas, and the lower fertile lands are cultivated. The capital of the state is Aracaju, on the course or estuary of the Cotinguiba River. The sandbar at the entrance to this river is dangerous. The city is found on a plain, and there are sand dunes within the city limits. The main public buildings include a plain church with unfinished twin towers, the government palace, the legislative halls. The other principal towns are Estância - pop,26,452, located in a highly productive sugar-growing district north of the capital, Capela - pop. 90,345, São Cristóvão, formerly Sergipe del-Rey - pop,75,353, which was also the old colonial capital near the mouth of the Irapiranga, and Maruim - pop. See also List of municipalities in Sergipe, Brazil, São Cristóvão was the site of the first Portuguese settlement, in 1591, at Sergipe DEl-Rey, which is today Sergipe, and later became the states capital for a while. As with other states in the northeast, Sergipe was invaded numerous times by the Dutch, from 1641 to 1645, the territory belonged to Dutch-controlled Brazil
18.
Bahia
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Bahia is one of the 26 states of Brazil and is located in the northeastern part of the country on the Atlantic coast. It is the 4th-largest Brazilian state by population and the 5th-largest by area, Bahias capital is the city of Salvador, located on a spit of land separating the Bay of All Saints from the Atlantic. Once a monarchial stronghold dominated by agricultural, slaving, and ranching interests, the name of the state derives from the earlier captaincy of Bahia de Todos os Santos, named for Bay of All Saints, a major feature of its coastline. The bay itself was named by the explorer Amerigo Vespucci during his second voyage and he named it after his parish church in Florence, San Salvatore di Ognissanti. Over time, the bay became distinguished as the Bay of All Saints, the state as Bahia, Bahia is bordered on the east by the Atlantic Ocean, with its Bay of All Saints the largest in Brazil. In the north, it is now bordered by Sergipe, Alagoas, Pernambuco, in the northwest, it is bordered by Tocantins. In the southwest, it borders Goiás, and in the south it is bordered by Espírito Santo, the state is crossed from north to south by the Diamantina Tableland, which divides it into two distinct geographical zones. To the east, the soil is fertile and the rain falls regularly, the western area is more arid and its predominate vegetation the cerrado. The natural aridity was greatly worsened over the 19th century by the habit of starting wildfires each year to improve the quality of the grass. The Green Road, a road that connects Mangue Seco in the far north to Praia do Forte, for this reason, the route is sometimes more than 10 km from the beach. At Praia do Forte, the road meets the Coconut Road leading to Salvador, passing through spots, in this region is located Deputado Luís Eduardo Magalhães International Airport. The largest bay on the Brazilian coast, the Bay of All Saints has a number of islands with tropical beaches. It is the largest navigable bay in Brazil and one of the most favorite spots for sports, due to its regular breezes, medium annual temperature of 26 °C. Major popular events and sport activities occur throughout the year, beginning on January 1, the islands of the bay are a separate attraction. Some are privately owned, others were declared a state heritage, other islands are the patrimony of 12 municipalities located around the bay. Only a few are uninhabited and many have small communities where the live on fishing. All have common characteristics, such a sea, dense vegetation, especially coconuts. Of the 56 islands, the most important are Itaparica, Madre de Deus, Maré, Frades, Medo, the Dendê Coast, south of Salvador, is surrounded by verdant vegetation, clear waters, islands, bays, coral reefs and a very diversified fauna
19.
Minas Gerais
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Minas Gerais is a state in the north of Southeastern Brazil. It ranks as the second most populous, the third by gross domestic product, Minas Gerais is the state with the largest number of Brazilian presidents. With an area of 586,528 square kilometres —larger than Metropolitan France—it is the fourth most extensive state in Brazil. In the south, the tourist points are the mineral spas, such as Caxambu, Lambari, São Lourenço, Poços de Caldas, São Thomé das Letras, Monte Verde. The landscape of the State is marked by mountains, valleys, in the Serra do Cipó, Sete Lagoas, Cordisburgo and Lagoa Santa, the caves and waterfalls are the attractions. Some of Brazils most famous caverns are located there, in recent years, the state has emerged as one of the largest economic forces of Brazil, exploring its great economic potential. Two interpretations are given for the origin of the name Minas Gerais and it comes from Minas dos Matos Gerais, the former name of the colonial province. Another explanation is that this ignores the two large geographical spaces which conformed the state in its history, the region of the mines, and these corresponded to the areas of Sertão which were farther and hard to access from the mining spots. The confusion comes from the fact that the term Gerais is taken as an adjective to Minas in the first version, Minas Gerais is in the north of the southeastern subdivision of Brasil, which also contains the states of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Espírito Santo. It borders on Bahia, Goiás, Mato Grosso do Sul, the states of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro and it also shares a short boundary with the Distrito Federal. Minas Gerais is situated between 14°1358 and 22°5400 S latitude and between 39°5132 and 51°0235 W longitude and it is larger in area than Metropolitan France or Spain. Minas Gerais features some of the longest rivers in Brazil, most notably the São Francisco, the Paraná and to a lesser extent, the state also holds many hydroelectric power plants, including Furnas. The most notable one is the Pico da Bandeira, the third highest mountain in Brazil at 2890 m, the state also has huge reserves of iron and sizeable reserves of gold and gemstones, including emerald, topaz and aquamarine mines. Emeralds found in location are comparable to the best Colombia-origin emeralds. Each region of the state has a character, geographically. The central and eastern area of the state is hilly and rocky, around Lagoa Santa and Sete Lagoas a typical Karst topography with caves and lakes is found. Some of the mountains are almost entirely iron ore, which led to extensive mining, recent advances in environmental policy helped to put limits to mining. Vale do Aços largest cities are Ipatinga, Coronel Fabriciano and Timóteo, now that mining is restricted large areas of forest are being removed for timber, charcoal and to clear land for cattle ranching
20.
Rio de Janeiro
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Rio de Janeiro, or simply Rio, is the second-most populous municipality in Brazil and the sixth-most populous in the Americas. The metropolis is anchor to the Rio de Janeiro metropolitan area, Rio de Janeiro is the capital of the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazils third-most populous state. Part of the city has designated as a World Heritage Site, named Rio de Janeiro. Founded in 1565 by the Portuguese, the city was initially the seat of the Captaincy of Rio de Janeiro, later, in 1763, it became the capital of the State of Brazil, a state of the Portuguese Empire. Rio stayed the capital of the pluricontinental Lusitanian monarchy until 1822 and this is one of the few instances in history that the capital of a colonising country officially shifted to a city in one of its colonies. Rio de Janeiro has the second largest municipal GDP in the country, the home of many universities and institutes, it is the second-largest center of research and development in Brazil, accounting for 17% of national scientific output according to 2005 data. The Maracanã Stadium held the finals of the 1950 and 2014 FIFA World Cups, the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup, the city is divided into 33 administrative regions. Europeans first encountered Guanabara Bay on 1 January 1502, by a Portuguese expedition under explorer Gaspar de Lemos captain of a ship in Pedro Álvares Cabrals fleet, allegedly the Florentine explorer Amerigo Vespucci participated as observer at the invitation of King Manuel I in the same expedition. The region of Rio was inhabited by the Tupi, Puri, Botocudo, in 1555, one of the islands of Guanabara Bay, now called Villegagnon Island, was occupied by 500 French colonists under the French admiral Nicolas Durand de Villegaignon. Consequently, Villegagnon built Fort Coligny on the island when attempting to establish the France Antarctique colony, Rio de Janeiro was the name of Guanabara Bay. Until early in the 18th century, the city was threatened or invaded by several, mostly French, pirates and buccaneers, such as Jean-François Duclerc, on 27 January 1763, the colonial administration in Portuguese America was moved from Salvador to Rio de Janeiro. The kingdoms capital was transferred to the city, which, thus, as there was no physical space or urban structure to accommodate hundreds of noblemen who arrived suddenly, many inhabitants were simply evicted from their homes. The first printed newspaper in Brazil, the Gazeta do Rio de Janeiro, from the colonial period until the first independent decades, Rio de Janeiro was a city of slaves. There was an influx of African slaves to Rio de Janeiro, in 1819. In 1840, the number of slaves reached 220,000 people, the Port of Rio de Janeiro was the largest port of slaves in America. As a political center of the country, Rio concentrated the political-partisan life of the Empire and it was the main stage of the abolitionist and republican movements in the last half of the 19th century. Rio continued as the capital of Brazil after 1889, when the monarchy was replaced by a republic, until the early years of the 20th century, the city was largely limited to the neighbourhood now known as the historic city centre, on the mouth of Guanabara Bay. Expansion of the city to the north and south was facilitated by the consolidation and electrification of Rios streetcar transit system after 1905, though many thought that it was just campaign rhetoric, Kubitschek managed to have Brasília built, at great cost, by 1960
21.
Cabo Frio
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Cabo Frio is a Brazilian municipality in Rio de Janeiro state, founded on November 13,1615. Cabo Frio is served by Cabo Frio International Airport, much of the content of this article comes from the corresponding Portuguese-language Wikipedia article. Cabo Frio Town Hall Cabo Frio Legislative Chamber
22.
Caatinga moist-forest enclaves
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The Caatinga enclaves moist forests is an ecoregion of the Tropical moist forests Biome, and the South American Atlantic Forest biome. It is located in northeastern Brazil, the ecoregion forms a series of discontinuous, island-like enclaves amongst the much larger and dry Caatinga xeric shrubland and thorn forests ecoregion and Cerrado subtropical savannas ecoregion. The Caatinga enclaves moist forests cover an area of 4,800 km2 in the state of Ceará, the enclaves are found mostly on four major regional plateaus, the Chapada do Araripe, Serra de Ibiapaba, Serra de Baturité, and Serra da Borborema. The enclaves are found on slopes and plateaus between 600 and 800 m elevation. The main vegetation type is semi-deciduous forests with four strata of vegetation, the forest is generally similar in composition to the primary Atlantic Forests further east, but includes species from the Caatinga, Cerrado, and Amazon Rainforest as well. The emergent and canopy layers are made up mostly of species of the families Fabaceae, Meliaceae and Apocynaceae. Fauna associated with this shows a strong connection with both the Amazon Rainforest and the Atlantic Forest, and, to a lesser degree, the Caatinga. In contrast to other groups, only a species of mammal is endemic to these moist forests enclaves. Most birds endemic to these moist forests enclaves are considered threatened, primarily due to loss, by BirdLife International and, consequently. In general the status of animals is comparably poorly known
23.
Chapada Diamantina
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Chapada Diamantina is a region of Bahia state, in the Northeast of Brazil. This same chain receives other names, like Serra do Espinhaço, in Minas Gerais, the Chapada Diamantina is at the center of Bahia state, in the Northeast of Brazil. It is the zone of the Espinhaço Range, has approximately 38,000 km2. Technically it is considered part of the biome, and is the highest area in this biome. The vegetation, always conditioned by the conditions, is represented by the cerrado, rocky fields, forests and caatinga, all of them harbouring great biodiversity. The regions climate is considered to be Mesotermic, of the Cwb according to the Köppen classification, Chapada Diamantina consists of the region roughly between the cities of Mucugê at the south, Andaraí at the southeast, Lençóis at the northeast and Palmeiras at the northwest. This region is named the Serra do Sincorá Ridge, however, the city of Ibicoara, near the southern limits of Chapada Diamantina, is also becoming important. The Sincorá Ridge is North–South oriented and has a length of 160 km and 20 to 30 km of width. From Lençóis, one of the most important cities in the area, Chapada Diamantina is one of the best destinations for trekking in the country. Among the main attractions are the Morro do Pai Inácio, Cachoeira da Fumaça, Mixila Waterfall, Sossego Waterfall, Lençóis, one of the main cities, is 420 kilometres from Salvador and can be reached by car, bus or plane. It has a lot of caves, where rock art. For this reason, Iraquara received the nickname City of Caves, in 1985, the Chapada Diamantina National Park was created with its headquarters in Palmeiras. Chapada Diamantina is a landform in the state of Bahia. The Chapada Diamantina runs from North to South in the middle of Bahia and is an extension of the Espinhaço Range System, the rocks in the system date back to Pangaea and erosion of the formation began in the Precambrian eon. The Range System has an erosional outlier that exposes a contact, the Pai Inácio Anticline is 25 km wide and exposes the sedimentary rocks of the Paraguaçu group. At the contact there are two different rock groups exposed one being the Chapada Diamantina and the Paraguaçu, with the Chapada Diamantina overlaying the Paraguaçu group, the two rock groups not only in elasticity but in composition as well. The Chapada Diamantina is composed primarily of sandstone, pelites and diamond bearing conglomerates, the Paraguaçu is composed of fine-grained sandstones, siltstones and argillites. The rocks of the Paraguaçu are softer and therefore susceptible to weathering and folding
24.
Atlantic dry forests
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The Atlantic dry forests are a tropical dry forest ecoregion of the Atlantic Forest Biome, located in eastern Brazil. The Atlantic dry forests cover an area of 115,100 square kilometers, the Atlantic dry forests stretch from northern Minas Gerais state across western Bahia state into central Piauí. The Atlantic dry forests generally lie along the upper São Francisco River of Minas Gerais and Bahia, a large enclave of Atlantic dry forest lies on the Chapada Diamantina of east-central Bahia. The Atlantic dry forests are dense, with deciduous and semi-deciduous trees reaching up to 25 to 30 meters in height. The Barriguda Tree, Cavanillesia arborea, is a dry forest tree species distinguished by its huge, Atlantic dry forest photos, including Barriguda Tree
25.
Atlantic forests
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The Atlantic Forest is characterized by a high species diversity and endemism. Restinga Forests are generally closed canopy short forests with tree density, open Restinga is an open, savanna-like formation with scattered clumps of small trees and shrubs and an extensive layer of herbs, grasses, and sedges. Seasonal tropical moist forests may receive more than 2000 mm of rain a year and these include Tropical Moist, Lowland Forests, Submontane Forest, and Montane Forests. Tabuleiro forests are found over very moist clay soils and Tabuleiro Savannas occur over faster-draining sand soils and these are humid areas that rely on water vapor from the ocean. Further inland are the Atlantic dry forests, which form a transition between the arid Caatinga to the northeast and the Cerrado savannas to the east. These forests are lower in stature, more open, with abundance of deciduous trees. These forests have between 700–1600 mm of precipitation annually with a dry season. This includes Deciduous and Semideciduous Seasonal Forest each with their own lowland, Montane forests are higher altitude wet forests across mountains and plateaus of southern Brazil. The Mussununga forests occur in southern Bahia and northern Espirito Santo states, the Mussununga ecosystem ranges from grasslands to woodlands associated with sandy spodosols. The word Mussununga is Amerindian Tupi-Guarani meaning soft and wet white sand, shrubby montane savannas occur at the highest elevations, also called Campo rupestre. The Atlantic Forest is unusual in that it extends as a tropical forest to latitudes as far as 24°S. This is because the trade winds produce precipitation throughout the southern winter, in fact, the northern Zona da Mata of northeastern Brazil receives much more rainfall between May and August than during the southern summer. The Atlantic forest is a rain forest, some maps even suggest the forest actually survived in moist pockets well away from the coastline where its endemic rainforest species mixed with much cooler-climate species. Unlike refugia for equatorial rainforests, the refuges for the Atlantic Forest have never been the product of detailed identification, despite so little forest remaining, the Atlantic Forest remains extraordinarily lush in biodiversity and endemic species, many of which are threatened with extinction. Approximately 40 percent of its plants and up 60 percent of its vertebrates are endemic species. The official threatened species list of Brazil contains over 140 terrestrial mammal species found in Atlantic Forest, in Paraguay there are 35 species listed as threatened, and 22 species are listed as threatened in the interior portion of the Atlantic Forest of Argentina. Nearly 250 species of amphibians, birds, and mammals have become extinct due to the result of activity in the past 400 years. Over 11,000 species of plants and animals are considered threatened today in the Atlantic Forest, over 52% of the tree species and 92% of the amphibians are endemic to this area
26.
Leaf
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A leaf is an organ of a vascular plant and is the principal lateral appendage of the stem. The leaves and stem together form the shoot, Leaves are collectively referred to as foliage, as in autumn foliage. Although leaves can be seen in different shapes, sizes and textures, typically a leaf is a thin, dorsiventrally flattened organ, borne above ground. Most leaves have distinctive upper surface and lower surface that differ in colour, hairiness, broad, flat leaves with complex venation are known as megaphylls and the species that bear them, the majority, as broad-leaved or megaphyllous plants. In others, such as the clubmosses, with different evolutionary origins, some leaves, such as bulb scales are not above ground, and in many aquatic species the leaves are submerged in water. Succulent plants often have thick juicy leaves, but some leaves are without major photosynthetic function and may be dead at maturity, as in some cataphylls, furthermore, several kinds of leaf-like structures found in vascular plants are not totally homologous with them. Examples include flattened plant stems called phylloclades and cladodes, and flattened leaf stems called phyllodes which differ from both in their structure and origin. Many structures of plants, such as the phyllids of mosses and liverworts and even of some foliose lichens. Leaves are the most important organs of most vascular plants and these are then further processed by chemical synthesis into more complex organic molecules such as cellulose, the basic structural material in plant cell walls. The plant must therefore bring these three together in the leaf for photosynthesis to take place. Once sugar has been synthesized, it needs to be transported to areas of growth such as the plant shoots and roots. Vascular plants transport sucrose in a tissue called the phloem. The phloem and xylem are parallel to each other but the transport of materials is usually in opposite directions. Within the leaf these vascular systems branch to form veins which supply as much as the leaf as possible and they are arranged on the plant so as to expose their surfaces to light as efficiently as possible without shading each other, but there are many exceptions and complications. For instance plants adapted to windy conditions may have pendent leaves, such as in many willows, the flat, or laminar, shape also maximises thermal contact with the surrounding air, promoting cooling. Functionally, in addition to photosynthesis the leaf is the site of transpiration and guttation. Many gymnosperms have thin needle-like or scale-like leaves that can be advantageous in cold climates with frequent snow and these are interpreted as reduced from megaphyllous leaves of their Devonian ancestors. For xerophytes the major constraint is not light flux or intensity, some window plants such as Fenestraria species and some Haworthia species such as Haworthia tesselata and Haworthia truncata are examples of xerophytes. and Bulbine mesembryanthemoides
27.
Transpiration
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Transpiration is the process of water movement through a plant and its evaporation from aerial parts, such as leaves, stems and flowers. Water is necessary for plants but only an amount of water taken up by the roots is used for growth. The remaining 97–99. 5% is lost by transpiration and guttation, leaf surfaces are dotted with pores called stomata, and in most plants they are more numerous on the undersides of the foliage. The stomata are bordered by guard cells and their stomatal accessory cells that open, transpiration also cools plants, changes osmotic pressure of cells, and enables mass flow of mineral nutrients and water from roots to shoots. Two major factors influence the rate of flow from the soil to the roots, the hydraulic conductivity of the soil. Both of these factors influence the rate of flow of water moving from the roots to the stomatal pores in the leaves via the xylem. Mass flow of water from the roots to the leaves is driven in part by capillary action. This movement lowers the potential in the leaf airspace and causes evaporation of liquid water from the mesophyll cell walls. This evaporation increases the tension on the water menisci in the cell walls, water is absorbed at the roots by osmosis, and any dissolved mineral nutrients travel with it through the xylem. The Cohesion-tension theory explains how leaves pull water through the xylem, water molecules stick together, or exhibit cohesion. As a water molecule evaporates from the surface of the leaf, it pulls on the adjacent water molecule, plants regulate the rate of transpiration by controlling the size of the stomatal apertures. The rate of transpiration is also influenced by the demand of the atmosphere surrounding the leaf such as boundary layer conductance, humidity, temperature, wind. Soil water supply and soil temperature can influence stomatal opening, the amount of water lost by a plant also depends on its size and the amount of water absorbed at the roots. Transpiration accounts for most of the loss by a plant by the leaves. Transpiration serves to evaporatively cool plants, as the water carries away heat energy due to its large latent heat of vaporization of 2260 kJ per litre. During a growing season, a leaf will transpire many times more water than its own weight, an acre of corn gives off about 3, 000–4,000 gallons of water each day, and a large oak tree can transpire 40,000 gallons per year. The transpiration ratio is the ratio of the mass of water transpired to the mass of dry matter produced, transpiration rates of plants can be measured by a number of techniques, including potometers, lysimeters, porometers, photosynthesis systems and thermometric sap flow sensors. Isotope measurements indicate transpiration is the component of evapotranspiration
28.
Endemism
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The extreme opposite of endemism is cosmopolitan distribution. An alternative term for a species that is endemic is precinctive, the word endemic is from New Latin endēmicus, from Greek ενδήμος, endēmos, native. Endēmos is formed of en meaning in, and dēmos meaning the people, the term, precinctive, has been suggested by some scientists, and was first used in botany by MacCaughey in 1917. It is the equivalent of endemism, precinction was perhaps first used by Frank and McCoy. That definition excludes artificial confinement of examples by humans in far-off botanical gardens or zoological parks, physical, climatic, and biological factors can contribute to endemism. The orange-breasted sunbird is found in the fynbos vegetation zone of southwestern South Africa. The glacier bear is found only in limited places in Southeast Alaska, political factors can play a part if a species is protected, or actively hunted, in one jurisdiction but not another. There are two subcategories of endemism, paleoendemism and neoendemism, paleoendemism refers to species that were formerly widespread but are now restricted to a smaller area. Neoendemism refers to species that have arisen, such as through divergence and reproductive isolation or through hybridization. Endemics can easily become endangered or extinct if their restricted habitat changes, particularly—but not only—due to human actions, there were millions of both Bermuda petrels and Bermuda cedars in Bermuda when it was settled at the start of the seventeenth century. By the end of the century, the petrels were thought extinct, cedars, already ravaged by centuries of shipbuilding, were driven nearly to extinction in the twentieth century by the introduction of a parasite. Bermuda petrels and cedars are now rare, as are species endemic to Bermuda
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Lear's macaw
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Lears macaw, also known as the indigo macaw, is a large all-blue Brazilian parrot, a member of a large group of neotropical parrots known as macaws. It was first described by Charles Lucien Bonaparte in 1856, Lears macaw is 70–75 cm long and weighs around 950 g. It is metallic blue with a faint, often visible, tinge of green. This macaw is rare with a restricted range. Its lifespan can exceed 30–50 years and it was named after the poet, author, and artist, Edward Lear, who published many drawings and paintings of live parrots in zoos and collections. Lears macaw is 70–75 cm long and weighs around 950 g, the body, tail, and wings are dark blue and the head is a slightly paler shade. It has an area of pale-yellow skin adjacent to the base of its beak and it has a large, blackish beak and dark grey feet. Lears macaw is similar to the hyacinth macaw and the slightly smaller glaucous macaw. The hyacinth macaw can be distinguished by its plumage, lack of greenish tinge. The glaucous macaw is paler and has a greyish head. When a group of macaws is searching for food or a new nesting ground, in addition, when danger is found on these hunts for new territory, the macaws let out their signature call which can be heard for miles. The macaw can reach speeds up to 35 miles per hour to escape predators or poachers. The primary diet of Lears macaw is the licuri palm nuts, but also Melanoxylon, Atropha pohliana, Dioclea, Spondias tuberosa, Zea mays, Schinopsis brasiliensis, Lears macaws rate of reproduction is one or two eggs per year during their mating season from December to May. However, not all pairs of birds mate often or at all, juveniles reach sexual maturity around 2–4 years of age. For over a century after it had described, the whereabouts of the wild population was unknown. It was eventually rediscovered in 1978 by ornithologist Helmut Sick in Bahia in the interior northeast of Brazil and it is known from two colonies at Toca Velha and Serra Branca, south of the Raso da Catarina plateau in northeast Bahia. In 1995, a roosting site holding 22 birds was located at Sento Sé/Campo Formoso,200 km to the west, Lears macaw inhabits stands of licuri palm. This habitat, while never plentiful, is estimated to be around 1. 6% of its original cover
30.
Spix's macaw
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Spixs macaw, also known as the little blue macaw, is a macaw native to Brazil. It is a member of Arini tribe in the subfamily Arinae, the bird is a medium-size parrot weighing about 300 grams, smaller than most of the large macaws. Its plumage is various shades of blue, with a head, light blue underparts. Males and females are almost identical in appearance, however the females are smaller on average. The species inhabited riparian Caraibeira woodland galleries in the basin of the Rio São Francisco within the Caatinga dry forest climate of interior northeastern Brazil. It had a restricted natural habitat due to its dependence on the tree for nesting, feeding and roosting. It fed primarily on seeds and nuts of Caraiba and various Euphorbiaceae shrubs, due to deforestation in its limited range and specialized habitat, the bird has been rare in the wild throughout the twentieth century. It has always been rare in captivity, partly due to the remoteness of its natural range. The IUCN regard the Spixs macaw as critically endangered and possibly extinct in the wild and its last known stronghold in the wild was in northeastern Bahia, Brazil and sightings are very rare. After a 2000 sighting of a bird, the next sighting was in 2016. The species is now maintained through a breeding program at several conservation organizations under the aegis of the Brazilian government. It is listed on CITES Appendix I, which makes trade illegal except for legitimate conservation, Spixs macaw is the only known species of the genus Cyanopsitta. The genus name is derived from the Ancient Greek kuanos meaning blue, the species name spixii is a Latinized form of the surname von Spix, hence Cyanopsitta spixii means blue parrot of Spix. The genus Cyanopsitta is one of six genera of Central and South American macaws in the tribe Arini, tribe Arini together with the short-tailed Amazon and allied parrots and a few miscellaneous genera make up subfamily Arinae of Neotropical parrots in family Psittacidae of true parrots. It was listed as Cyanopsittacus spixi by Italian zoologist Tommaso Salvadori in his 1891 Catalog of the Birds in the British Museum, naturalists have noted the Spix similarity to other smaller members of tribe Arini based on general morphology as long ago as Rev. F. G. Dutton, president of the Avicultural Society U. K. in 1900, Brazilian ornithologist Helmut Sick stated in 1981, Cyanopsitta spixii. is not a real macaw. The morphology-based taxonomy of C. spixii, intermediate between the macaws and the smaller Arini, has been confirmed by recent molecular phylogenetic studies. In a 2008 molecular phylogenetic study of 69 parrot genera, the diagrams indicate that C. spixii split from the ancestral parakeets before the differentiation of the modern macaws
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Moustached woodcreeper
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The moustached woodcreeper is a species of bird in the Dendrocolaptinae subfamily. Its natural habitat is subtropical or tropical dry forests and it is threatened by habitat loss
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Caatinga cacholote
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The Caatinga cacholote is a species of bird in the Furnariidae family. It is endemic to the Caatinga in north-eastern Brazil, formerly, it was considered conspecific with P. unirufa under the common name rufous cacholote. The Rufous Cacholote is two species
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White-spined Atlantic spiny rat
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The white-spined Atlantic spiny rat is a spiny rat species endemic to Brazil. The white-spined species is one of the smaller spiny rats, with a length of 15 to 21 cm. Adult weight can be anything from 120 to 230 g, the fur on the upper body and flanks is tawny to buff, interspersed with much paler spines. The underparts, including the surface of the tail, are white. Females are pregnant between January and June, and give birth to litters of up to four young, the white-spined Atlantic spiny rat is found in a relatively small region of eastern Brazil, in the states of Sergipe and Bahia. Compared with other rats, they are adapted for a relatively dry climate
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Karimi's fat-tailed mouse opossum
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Karimis fat-tailed mouse opossum is a species of opossum in the family Didelphidae. It is endemic to central and northeast Brazil, where it is found in the cerrado and its head-and-body length is about 95 millimeters, and its tail length is about 72 millimeters. It is very similar to T. pallidor, the species is named after Iranian epidemiologist Y
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Dasyprocta
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The term agouti or common agouti designates several rodent species of the genus Dasyprocta. They are native to Middle America, northern and central South America, some species have also been introduced elsewhere in the West Indies. They are related to pigs and look quite similar, but are larger and have longer legs. The species vary considerably in colour, being brown, reddish, dull orange, greyish or blackish and their bodies are covered with coarse hair which is raised when alarmed. They weigh 2. 4–6 kg and are 40. 5–76 cm in length, with short, confusingly, the related pacas were placed by some authorities in a genus called Agouti, though Cuniculus has priority and is the correct term. In Mexico, the agouti is called a sereque, in Eastern Ecuador, the common agouti is known as guatusa. Agoutis have five front and three toes, the first toe is very small. The tail is short or nonexistent and hairless. The molar teeth have cylindrical crowns, with islands and a single lateral fold of enamel. Agoutis may grow to be up to 60 cm in length and 4 kg in weight, most species are brown on their backs and whitish or buff on their bellies, the fur may have a glossy appearance and then glimmers in an orange colour. Reports differ as to whether they are diurnal or nocturnal animals, in the wild, they are shy animals and flee from humans, while in captivity they may become trusting. In Trinidad, they are renowned for being very fast runners, agoutis are found in forested and wooded areas in Central and South America. Their habitats include rainforests, savannas and, nowadays, cultivated fields and they conceal themselves at night in hollow tree trunks or in burrows among roots. Active and graceful in their movements, their pace is either a kind of trot or a series of following one another so rapidly as to look like a gallop. They take readily to water, in which they swim well, when feeding, agoutis sit on their hind legs and hold food between their fore paws. They may gather in groups of up to 100 to feed and they eat fallen fruit, leaves and roots, although they may sometimes climb trees to eat green fruit. They will hoard food in small, buried stores, in a pinch, they have also been seen eating the eggs of ground-nesting birds and even shellfish on the seashore. Sometimes, they can cause damage to sugarcane and banana plantations and they are regarded as one of the few species that can open Brazil nuts without tools, mainly thanks to their strength and exceptionally sharp teeth
Brazil
