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50-511: The Nascentes Geraizeiras Sustainable Development Reserve (RDS), in the north of the state of Minas Gerais. It has an area of 38,177 hectares (94,340 acres) in the Cerrado biome. It protects parts of the municipalities of: The Nascentes Geraizeiras Sustainable Development Reserve (RDS) was created in response to demands from the Movimento dos Geraizeiros, which represents the traditional community of

100-458: A diverse local population that relies heavily on the resources of their environment. Until the mid-1960s, agricultural activities in the Cerrado were very limited, since natural cerrado soils are not fertile enough for crop production, directed mainly at the extensive production of beef cattle for subsistence of the local market. After this period, however, the urban and industrial development of

150-468: A full 21 percent of the country's land area (extending marginally into Paraguay and Bolivia). About 75% of the Cerrado’s 2 million km is privately owned. Vast amounts of research have shown that the Cerrado is one of the richest of all tropical savanna regions and has high levels of endemism . Characterizing it by its enormous ranges of plant and animal biodiversity, World Wide Fund for Nature named

200-436: A height of about 5 metres and comprises the top stratum, which consists of phanerophytes . They can be about 45 metres high. The trees (and sometimes shrubs) are of various heights. One tree has its crown at the height of another’s trunk. At the top the crowns of the different species of trees form a more or less closed canopy. This layer creates special ecological conditions in the underlying layers of forests . The density of

250-597: A significant increase in agricultural and cattle production. On the other hand, the urban pressure and the rapid establishment of agricultural activities in the region have been rapidly reducing the biodiversity of the ecosystems, and the population in the Cerrado region more than doubled from 1970 to 2010, going from 35.8 to 76 million. The Cerrado was thought challenging for agriculture until researchers at Brazil's agricultural and livestock research agency, Embrapa , discovered that it could be made fit for industrial crops by appropriate additions of phosphorus and lime. In

300-399: A temperate crop, and currently, Brazil is the world's main soyabeans exporter due to the boom in animal feed production caused by the global rise in meat demand. Today the Cerrado region provides more than 70% of the beef cattle production in the country, being also a major production center of grains, mainly soya, beans, maize, and rice. Large extensions of the Cerrado are also used for

350-422: Is a relatively high diversity of snakes in the Cerrado (22–61 species, depending on site) with Colubridae being the richest family. The open nature of the cerrado vegetation most likely contributes to the high diversity of snakes. Information about Cerrado amphibians is extremely limited, although the Cerrado probably has a unique assemblage of species with some endemic to the region. Most birds found in

400-729: Is composed mainly of the Poaceae , Cyperaceae , Leguminosae , Compositae , Myrtaceae and Rubiaceae . Much of the vegetation in the gallery forests is similar to nearby rainforest; however, there are some endemic species found only in the Cerrado gallery forests. 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 positively correlated with tree trunk basal area in Cerrado habitats. Much as in other grasslands and savannas, fire

450-410: Is generally thought to be relatively low in the Cerrado compared to other areas like caatinga or lowland rainforest, although one recent study found 57 species in one cerrado area with the high diversity driven by the availability of open habitat. Ameiva ameiva is among the largest lizards found in the Cerrado and is the most important lizard predator where it is found in the Cerrado. There

500-512: Is heterogeneous in terms of canopy cover. Goodland (1971) divided the Cerrado into four categories ranging from least to most canopy cover: campo sujo ( herbaceous layer with occasional small trees about 3 m tall), campo cerrado (slightly higher density of trees about 4 m tall on average), cerrado sensu stricto (orchard-like vegetation with trees about 6 m high) and cerradão (canopy cover near 50% with general height 9 m). Probably around 800 species of trees are found in

550-525: Is important in maintaining and shaping the Cerrado's landscape; many plants in the Cerrado are fire-adapted, exhibiting characters like thick corky bark to withstand the heat. Cerrado vegetation is believed to be ancient, stretching back perhaps as far in a prototypic form as the Cretaceous , before Africa and South America separated. A dynamic expansion and contraction between cerrado and Amazonian rainforest has probably occurred historically, with expansion of

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600-429: 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 80–200 cm for over 90% of the area. This ecoregion has a very strong dry season during the southern winter (approx. April–September). The Cerrado is characterized by unique vegetation types. It is composed of a shifting mosaic of habitats, with

650-872: The Brazilian Constitution as a National Heritage. It is also home to the Guarani Aquifer , stores the largest fresh water underground reservoirs in South America, and supplies water to a third of the Amazon river and the largest basins in the continent. Brazilian agriculturalists and ministers regard it as having no conservation value, and the government has protected merely 1.5% of the Cerrado biome in Federal Reserves. By 1994, an estimated 695,000 km of cerrado (representing 35% of its area) had been converted to 'anthropic [sic] landscape'. In total, 37.3% of

700-627: The Federal District . The core areas of the Cerrado biome are the Brazilian highlands – the Planalto . The main habitat types of the Cerrado consist of forest savanna, wooded savanna, park savanna and gramineous -woody savanna. The Cerrado also includes savanna wetlands and gallery forests . The second largest of Brazil's major habitat types , after the Amazonian rainforest , the Cerrado accounts for

750-454: The Xingu and Tapajós . During the last four decades, the Cerrado’s river basins have been highly impacted by extreme deforestation, expansion of the agricultural and cattle ranching frontier, construction of dams, and extraction of water for irrigation. The Cerrado is the second largest biome in South America and the most biodiverse savanna in the world. However, it is not currently recognized by

800-698: The Biodiversity of the Cerrado Biome, with UK Overseas Development Administration funding. Its aim is to survey the floristic patterns of Cerrado vegetation and to discover representative areas and biodiversity "hot-spots". A 2017 assessment found that 433,581 km , or 23%, of the ecoregion is in protected areas. Protected areas in Brazil include: as well as Noel Kempff Mercado National Park in Bolivia. Herbaceous layer In ecology , stratification refers to

850-622: The Brazilian cerrados was provided by Danish botanist Eugenius Warming (1892) in the book Lagoa Santa, in which he describes the main features of the cerrado vegetation in the state of Minas Gerais . Taking advantage of the sprouting of the herbaceous stratum that follows a burning in the Cerrado, the aboriginal inhabitants of these regions learned to use the fire as a tool, to increase the fodder to offer to their domesticated animals. Xavantes , Tapuias  [ pt ] , Karajás , Avá- Canoeiros , Krahôs , Xerentes , Xacriabás were some of

900-459: The Cerrado and play an important role in consuming and decomposing organic matter, as well as constituting an important food source to many other animal species. The highest diversity of galling insects (insects that build galls ) in the world is also found in the Cerrado, with the most species (46) found at the base of the Serra do Cipó in southeast Brazil. The first detailed European account of

950-422: 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 a high density (up to 4000 per hectare) of the nests of leaf cutter ants ( saúvas ), which are also very diverse. Along with termites, leaf cutter ants are the primary herbivores of

1000-495: The Cerrado breed there although there are some Austral migrants (breed in temperate South America and winter in the Amazon basin) and Nearctic migrants (breed in temperate North America and winter in the Neotropics) that pass through. Most breeding birds in the Cerrado are found in more closed canopy areas like gallery forests although 27% of the birds breed only in open habitats and 21% breed in either open or closed habitats. Many of

1050-534: The Cerrado during glacial periods like the Pleistocene . These processes and the resulting fragmentation in multiple refugia have probably contributed to the high species richness both of the Cerrado and of the Amazonian rainforest. The Cerrado has a high diversity of vertebrates, with 150 amphibian species, 120 reptile species, 837 bird species, and 161 mammal species recorded. Lizard diversity

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1100-444: The Cerrado has already been totally converted to human use, while an additional 41.4% is used for pasture and charcoal production. The gallery forests in the region have been among the most heavily affected. It is estimated that only about 432,814 km , or 21.3% of the original vegetation, remains intact today. During the last 25 years this biome has been increasingly threatened by industrial monoculture farming, particularly soybeans,

1150-421: The Cerrado the biologically richest savanna in the world, with about 10,000 plant species and 10 endemic bird species. There are nearly 200 species of mammal in the Cerrado, though only 14 are endemic. The large fraction of private ownership makes protection difficult though. The Cerrado's climate is typical of the wetter savanna regions of the world, with a semi-humid tropical climate . The Cerrado

1200-592: The Cerrado. Among the most diverse families of trees in the Cerrado are the Leguminosae  (153 spp.), Malpighiaceae  (46), Myrtaceae  (43), Melastomataceae  (32), and Rubiaceae  (30). Much of the Cerrado is dominated by the Vochysiaceae (23 species in the Cerrado) due to the abundance of three species in the genus Qualea . The herbaceous layer usually reaches about 60 cm in height and

1250-534: The Southeast Region has forced agriculture to the Central-West Region. The transfer of the country's capital to Brasília has been another focus of attraction of population to the central region: From 1975 until the beginning of the 1980s, many governmental subsidy programs were launched to promote agriculture, with the intent of stimulating the development of the Cerrado region. As a result, there has been

1300-512: The birds in the Cerrado, especially those found in closed forest, are related to species from the Atlantic rainforest and also the Amazon rainforest. The crowned solitary eagle , hyacinth macaw , toco toucan , buff-necked ibis , dwarf tinamou , and Brazilian merganser are examples of birds found in the Cerrado. Gallery forests serve as primary habitat for most of the mammals in the Cerrado, having more water, being protected from fires that sweep

1350-411: The broadest sense, the layering of diaspores in the soil may be counted as part of the vertical structure. The plants of a layer, especially with regard to their way of life and correspondingly similar root distribution interact closely and compete strongly for space, light, water and nutrients. The stratification of a plant community is the result of long selection and adaptation processes. Through

1400-401: The canopy fills out. Thereafter, the amount of light available to plants is significantly reduced and only those that are suited to such conditions can thrive there. By contrast, grassland consists of only moss and herb layers. Sometimes, a shrub layer builds up in grasslands as part of a process of spontaneous reforestation ( ecological succession ). The term forest floor can refer to

1450-494: The diminishing vegetation in the Cerrado, they now are receiving some charcoal from the eucalyptus plantations and these efforts are growing. The Cerrado biome is strategic for the water resources of Brazil. The biome contains the headwaters and the largest portion of South American watersheds (the Paraná-Paraguay, Araguaia-Tocantins, and São Francisco river basins) and the upper catchments of large Amazon tributaries, such as

1500-433: The establishment of a highly mechanized, capital intensive system of agriculture. There is also a strong agribusiness lobby in Brazil and in particular, the production of soybeans in the Cerrado is influenced by large corporations such as ADM, Cargill and Bunge, these latter two directly associated with the mass deforestation of this biome. One issue with expanding this reserve is that research needs to be done to choose

1550-545: The existing Médio Juruá Extractive Reserve in Amazonas . The Nascentes Geraizeiras RDS is administered by the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio). The reserve is classed as IUCN protected area category VI (protected area with sustainable use of natural resources). The purpose is to protect the water sources in the reserve, protect areas used for extraction by the traditional communities, give

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1600-655: The first and second shrub layers (low and high bushes). The shrub layer needs sun and little moisture, unlike the moss layer which requires a lot of water. The shrub layer only receives light filtered by the canopy, i.e. it is preferred by semi-shade or shade-loving plants that would not tolerate bright sunlight. Small to medium sized birds sometimes known as bush nesters are often found in the shrub layer where their nests are protected by foliage. European examples include blackbird, song thrush, robin or blackcap. In addition to shrubs, such as elder, hazel, hawthorn, raspberry and blackberry, clematis may also occur while, in other parts of

1650-447: The first indigenous peoples occupying different regions in the Cerrado. Many groups among the indigenous were nomads and explored the Cerrado by hunting and collecting. Others practiced coivara agriculture, an itinerant type of slash-and-burn agriculture . The mixing of indigenous, quilombola maroon communities, extractivists, geraizeiros (living in the drier regions), riverbank dwellers and vazanteiros (living on floodplains) shaped

1700-410: The formation of different layers a given habitat is better utilized. Strongly vertically stratified habitats are very stable ecosystems . The opposite is not true, because several less stratified vegetation types, such as reed beds , can be very stable. The layers of a habitat are closely interrelated and at least partly interdependent. This is often the case as a result of the changes in microclimate of

1750-405: The general layer of the canopy may form an emergent layer . The understory can refer to those trees above the shrub layer and below the canopy, but is often defined more broadly, including the shrub layer. The shrub layer is the stratum of vegetation within a habitat with heights of about 1.5 to 5 metres. This layer consists mostly of young trees and bushes, and it may be divided into

1800-401: The height of their individual plants, the different elements may however have a range of heights. The actual layer is characterised by the height range in which the vast majority of photosynthetic organs (predominantly leaves ) are found. Taller species will have part of their shoot system in the underlying layers. In addition to the above-ground stratification there is also a “root layer”. In

1850-532: The landscape and having a more highly structured habitat. Eleven mammal species are endemic to the Cerrado. Notable species include large herbivores like the Brazilian tapir and Pampas deer and large predators like the maned wolf , cougar , jaguar , giant otter , ocelot and jaguarundi . Although the diversity is much lower than in the adjacent Amazon and Atlantic Forest, several species of monkeys are present, including black-striped capuchin , black howler monkey and black-tufted marmoset . The insects of

1900-400: The late 1990s, between 14 million and 16 million tons of lime were being poured on Brazilian fields each year. The quantity rose to 25 million tons in 2003 and 2004, equaling around five tons of lime per hectare. This manipulation of the soil allowed for industrial agriculture to grow exponentially in the area. Researchers also developed tropical varieties of soybeans , until then

1950-576: The location of these reserves because the Cerrado biome is floristically very heterogeneous and constitutes a biological mosaic. Teams from the University of Brasília , CPAC and the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh have been collaborating on this project for a number of years supported by Brazilian, European Community and British funds. The project has recently been expanded into a major Anglo-Brazilian initiative, Conservation and Management of

2000-409: The moss and root layers (see below), but often is defined more broadly, including also dead trees, herbaceous plants, mushrooms, and tree seedlings. Growing on the surface of the forest floor is vegetation of up to about 0.15 metres in height in what is variously described as a moss, soil or cryptogam layer. The ground itself is covered by a layer of dead plant and animal material. In this layer and

2050-412: The production of cellulose pulp for the paper industry, with the cultivation of several species of eucalyptus and pines , but as a secondary activity. Coffee produced in the Cerrado is now a major export. Charcoal production for Brazil's steel industry comes in second to agriculture in the Cerrado. They actually are quite intertwined. When land is being cleared to make more land for agriculture,

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2100-404: The savanna-like cerrado itself on well-drained areas between strips of gallery forest (closed canopy tall forest) which occur along streams. Between the cerrado and the gallery forest is an area of vegetation known as the wet campo with distinct up- and downslope borders where tree growth is inhibited due to wide seasonal fluctuations in the water table. The savanna portion of the Cerrado

2150-592: The state. This includes small-scale producers of cassava flour, brown sugar, corn and beans, and harvesters of the pequi and panã fruits and of medicinal plants of the cerrado. The RDS was created by presidential decree on 13 October 2014. The decree also established the Serra do Gandarela National Park in Minas Gerais and the Guaricana National Park in Paraná , and added over 30,000 hectares (74,000 acres) to

2200-443: The top layers, the light factor being of particular importance. Besides the superposition of different plants growing on the same soil, there is a lateral impact of the higher layers on adjacent plant communities, for example, at the edges of forests and bushes. This particular vegetation structure results in the growth of certain vegetation types such as forest mantle and margin communities. This layer of vegetation starts from

2250-530: The traditional communities access to the reserve and promote their social and economic development, encourage studies on conservation and sustainable use of the cerrado and promote conservation of biodiversity. Cerrado The Cerrado ( Portuguese pronunciation: [seˈʁadu] ) is a vast ecoregion of tropical savanna in eastern Brazil , being present in the states of Goiás , Mato Grosso do Sul , Mato Grosso , Tocantins , Maranhão , Piauí , Bahia , Minas Gerais , São Paulo , Paraná and

2300-419: The tree's trunks and roots are often used in the production of charcoal, helping to make money for the clearing. The Brazilian steel industry has traditionally always used the trunks and roots from the Cerrado for charcoal but now that the steel mills in the state of Minas Gerais are among the world's largest, it has taken a much higher toll on the Cerrado. However, recently because of the conservation efforts and

2350-463: The trees determines the amount of light inside the forest. The force of heavy rainfall is reduced by the canopy and the passage of rainwater is fed more slowly downwards. The tree layer can be further subdivided into the upper tree layer or canopy and the lower tree layer or understory. The canopy usually refers to the highest layer of vegetation in a forest or woodland, made up of the crowns of its tallest trees. However, individual trees growing above

2400-483: The unregulated expansion of industrial agriculture, the burning of vegetation for charcoal and the development of dams to provide irrigation are drawing criticisms and have been identified as potential threats to several Brazilian rivers. This industrial farming of the Cerrado, with the clearing of land for eucalyptus and soy plantations, has grown so much because of various forms of subsidy, including very generous tax incentives and low interest loans. This has resulted in

2450-520: The vertical layering of a habitat ; the arrangement of vegetation in layers. It classifies the layers (sing. stratum , pl. strata ) of vegetation largely according to the different heights to which their plants grow. The individual layers are inhabited by different animal and plant communities (stratozones). The following layers are generally distinguished: forest floor ( root and moss layers), herb , shrub , understory and canopy layers. These vegetation layers are primarily determined by

2500-580: The world, vines and lianas may form part of this stratum. At the edge of a woodland the shrub layer acts as a windbreak close to the trees and protects the soil from drying out. This layer contains mostly non-woody vegetation, or ground cover , growing in the forest with heights of up to about one and a half metres. The herb layer consists of various herbaceous plants ( therophytes , geophytes , cryptophytes , hemicryptophytes ), dwarf shrubs ( chamaephytes ) as well as young shrubs or tree seedlings . In forests, early flowering plants appear first before

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