Latin American biomes
Hosting 40% of the world's biodiversity and a third of the planet's freshwater, Latin America has a central importance in the global fight against climate change and their effects. Learn more about the region's main biomes, their richness and the services they provide.
The Amazon
One of the world's most iconic biomes, the Amazon is gigantic in size and in importance.
- It occupies about 40% of the Brazilian territory, as well as part of the territory of seven other South American countries.
- It has dozens of rivers and more than a thousand tributaries that form the largest surface freshwater reserve available in the world.
- It brings together a large part of the planet's biodiversity, including species yet unknown by science.
- It helps regulate the continent's climate, bringing humidity and rain to other regions through the so-called aerial rivers: immense masses of vapor, formed by the transpiration of forest trees.
- The masses of humidity, that cross the skies and are carried by the air currents, cause rains to irrigate the Brazilian territory and other South American regions.
Patagonia
Patagonia brings together three biomes with different characteristics that show the richness of its biodiversity.
- It is formed by three biomes.
- It is located at the extreme south of the American continent, the region has territorial extension of approximately 800,000 km² and covers Argentina and Chile.
- Its first biome is the austral extreme of the Andean Mountain Range, where there are 300 lakes and 4 thousand km² of glaciers that constitute an important freshwater reserve.
- The second and third biomes are on the other side of the Mountain Range and are a plain of steppes and a steep coast fed by rivers that favor the settlements of populations and fruit production.
Gran Chaco
The Gran Chaco is a large dry forest biome that keeps sets of genes essential to the survival of the human species.
- It is the largest dry tropical forest of South America.
- It has 800 thousand km² of extension.
- It covers parts of Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay, in addition to a small portion of Brazil.
- It is the home of endemic and rare species of flora and fauna.
Atlantic Forest
With exuberant landscapes, the Atlantic Forest is one of the planet's most biodiversified forests.
- It encompasses a set of forest ecosystems with quite a diversified forest structure and compositions.
- It shelters about 70% of the Brazilian population in its territory.
- It has seven of the nine main watershed of Brazil, which supply large cities and help regulate the climate.
- It shelters the Mantiqueira Mountain, water source that supplies more than 20 million people in the southeastern region of Brazil, where our largest operation is located.
Rainforests
Known as the Lacandon Forest, it is one of Central America's most extensive tropical forest areas.
- It extends through 1.9 million hectares, from Chiapas, in Mexico, up to the north of Guatemala.
- It has six main fauna and flora reserves, among them the Blue Mountains, one of the continent's largest mountains.
- It was inhabited by the Mayan Empire and today it shelters thousands of ethnic groups.
- It is one of the sites with the largest number of plant species in the continent, because the climate in this region is always warm and humid.