The Brazilian Atlantic Forest (Mata Atlântica) is one of the most endangered ecosystems on the planet, at risk of wholesale destruction. When Europeans first arrived in Brazil in the sixteenth century, the highly diverse Atlantic forest covered 1 million km2 of the eastern and southern coast, representing 12 percent of the Brazilian territory. These forests have been fragmented and reduced to about 7 percent of their original area (SOS Mata Atlântica and INPE 1993). The Mata Atlântica harbors great biological diversity, containing nearly 7 percent of the world’s species, many of which are endemic and threatened with extinction.
The Atlantic forest domain can be subdivided into two major regions based on vegetation types and geographic features (Eiten 1974; Fonseca1985).
The first type, tropical evergreen mesophytic broadleaf forest, originally covered most of the Brazilian east slope extending to the coast. This type is found at low to medium elevations with mean annual precipitation around 2,000 mm and mean annual temperatures of 16°–19°C (Hueck 1972). The second major type, tropical semideciduous mesophytic broadleaf forest (Eiten 1974), extends to the western range of the coastal hills, stretching to the Plateau region. This vegetation type originally covered large areas of the states of Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Paraná. Plateau forests (Mata
de Planalto) occur in areas of lower annual rainfall (1,000–1,500 mm) with a pronounced dry season of 5–6 months, corresponding to the winter season, when average monthly rainfall is around 50 mm (Passos 1992). Despite lower precipitation, tall forests are still present, containing both evergreen and semideciduous species (Eiten 1974; Alonso 1977).
Chapter 17: Agroforestry Buffer Zones and Stepping Stones: Tools for the Conservation of Fragmented Landscapes in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest 415 Laury Cullen Jr., Jefferson Ferreira Lima, and Tiago Pavan Beltrame