ABSTRACT
The savanna vegetation of Brazil is referred to as cerrado, which is the Portuguese word for “dense,” “thick,” or “closed.” Cerrado covers approximately 1.5-2 million km2, or 20-25% of the total land cover of Brazil, and is the second largest vegetation type after the Amazonian forest (Furley and Ratter, 1988; Fearnside, 2000). Contiguous cerrado covers over 10 states, from Piauí and Maranhão to the north; Minas Gerais, São Paulo, and Mato Grosso do Sul to the south; and Rondônia to the west (Figure 5.1), corresponding to a 20° range in latitude and 0-1800 m range in elevation (Ratter et al., 1997). Biodiversity, including known plants, animals, and fungi, is estimated to be 160,000 species (Oliveira and Marquis, 2002).
