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Tropical Azonal Vegetation

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Global Vegetation

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Abstract

Of all coastal ecosystems, mangroves are in particular need of conservation and restoration because of their widespread degradation and regional extinction. Mangroves are significant habitats for highly specialized species, and they offer numerous ecosystem services, among others coastal protection. They colonize flat coasts and estuaries, and are subject to the tides. Thus, mangrove trees must be able to cope with the change between high and low tide, high salinity, oxygen deficiency in the soil, and unstable substrates. Their life cycles and physiological characteristics are therefore discussed in detail. Freshwater wetlands include tropical floodplains, which have pronounced flooding dynamics, as seen in the example of the white and black water rivers in the Amazon lowlands, as well as swamplands such as the Pantanal in Brazil and the Okavango Delta in Botswana. Of the tropical mires, forest peatlands are of particular global importance as carbon sinks.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. TUM School of Life Sciences, The Technical University of Munich, Freising, Germany

    Jörg S. Pfadenhauer

  2. Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Frank A. Klötzli

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  1. Jörg S. Pfadenhauer
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Pfadenhauer, J.S., Klötzli, F.A. (2020). Tropical Azonal Vegetation. In: Global Vegetation. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49860-3_4

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