The Atlantic Coastal Forest of Northeastern Brazil

edited by Wm. Wayt Thomas

This title is volume 100 of Memoirs of The New York Botanical Garden. It unites information on the vegetation and flora of the Atlantic forests of northeastern Brazil in 18 chapters written by 33 scientists. All the papers have been edited by Wm. Wayt Thomas, a research scientist in The New York Botanical Garden’s Institute of Systematic Botany, who has studied plant diversity in the Atlantic coastal forests of Brazil for more than 15 years.

The Atlantic coastal forests of Brazil are one of the world’s biodiversity “hotspots,” highly threatened areas rich in species found nowhere else. This long, narrow strip of forest spans over 23° of latitude and over 4,000 km along the coast of Brazil—the equivalent distance from Nova Scotia to Cuba. As a result, it comprises many different kinds of forest, each with its own flora and conservation problems.

According to Dr. Thomas, “Within the Atlantic forest biome, the forests of northeastern Brazil are the most diverse, most threatened, and least understood. By means of this book, I sought to bring together the top-notch research of the talented Brazilian scientists studying these forests. We hope that a clearer understanding of the region’s forests and ecology will lead to wise conservation decisions.”

This volume is the first work in English on the vegetation of the endangered Atlantic forests of northeastern Brazil, and one of only a handful in any language on the subject. While most of the papers address the forests of a specific area, the authors place their conclusions in the context of the entire region.

The first paper surveys and describes the types of forest vegetation found in northeastern Brazil. Eleven papers describe specific forest sites, from the tabuleiro forests on Tertiary sediments to the diverse forests of southern Bahia and the gallery forests of high-elevation meadows. Two are survey papers, one of the moist mountain-top forests of Pernambuco and Paraíba and the other of the forests of the Linhares Reserve in Espírito Santo. Four papers describe the human impact on the coastal forest and its plants: one through satellite imagery of land use, one through studies of regeneration in secondary forests, one describing an urban forest, and one compiling the common names of forest plants in southern Bahia.

This book provides fundamental information to botanists, ecologists, conservation biologists, and policy makers. It also lays a strong scientific foundation for conservation in one of the most diverse and threatened regions on the planet.

The book also marks a milestone as the 100th publication in the Memoirs of The New York Botanical Garden. This series, whose first volume was published in 1900, is dedicated to the publication of longer botanical works.

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