Congolian rainforests

The Congolian rainforests are a broad belt of lowland tropical moist broadleaf forests which extend across the basin of the Congo River and its tributaries in Central Africa.

Congolian rainforests
Congolian rainforest ecoregions: 2. Atlantic Equatorial coastal forests, 6. Central Congolian lowland forests 7. Eastern Congolian swamp forests, 8. Western Congolian swamp forests, 9. Northeastern Congolian forests, 15. Northwestern Congolian lowland forests
Ecology
RealmAfrotropic
BiomeTropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests
Geography
Countries

Geography

The Congolian forests cover southeastern Cameroon, Gabon, the Republic of the Congo, the northern and central Democratic Republic of the Congo, and portions of southern and southwestern Central African Republic.

Ecology

The Congolian rainforest is the world's second-largest tropical forest, spans six countries, and contains a quarter of the world's remaining tropical forest.[1] With annual forest loss of 0.3% during the 2000s,[2] the region has the lowest deforestation rate of any major tropical forest zone.[3]

To the north, south, and southwest, the forests transition to drier forest-savanna mosaic, a mosaic of drier forests, savannas, and grasslands.[4] To the west, the Congolian forests transition to the coastal Lower Guinean forests, which extend from southwestern Cameroon into southern Nigeria and Benin; these forests zones share many similarities and are sometimes known as the Lower Guinean-Congolian forests. To the east, the lowland Congolian forests transition to the highland Albertine Rift montane forests, which cover the mountains lining the Albertine Rift, a branch of the East African Rift system. The Congolian Forests are a global 200 ecoregion.

Ecoregions

The World Wide Fund for Nature divides the Congolian forests into several distinct ecoregions:

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See also

References
  1. "Congo Basin Forest Partnership". USAID. Archived from the original on 2008-05-08. Retrieved 2008-05-06.
  2. Mayaux, P.; Pekel, J. F.; Desclée, B.; Donnay, F.; Lupi, A.; Achard, F.; Clerici, M.; Bodart, C.; Brink, A.; Nasi, R.; Belward, A. (2013). "Mayaux et al 2013". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. 368 (1625): 20120300. doi:10.1098/rstb.2012.0300. PMC 3720022. PMID 23878331.
  3. "Deforestation in the Congo Rainforest". Mongabay.
  4. Linder, H. Peter, Helen M. de Klerk Julia Born et al. (2012). "The partitioning of Africa: statistically defined biogeographical regions in sub‐Saharan Africa". Journal of Biogeography Volume 39, Issue 7 May 2012.
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