East Deccan dry evergreen forests

The East Deccan dry evergreen forests are an ecoregion of southeastern India. The ecoregion includes the coastal region behind the Coromandel Coast on the Bay of Bengal, between the Eastern Ghats and the sea. It covers eastern Tamil Nadu, part of Puducherry and south eastern Andhra Pradesh.

The East Deccan dry evergreen forests cover lie in the rain shadow of the Western Ghats and Eastern Ghats, which block the rain-bearing summer southwest monsoon.

The ecoregion covers an area of 25,500 square kilometers (9,800 sq mi), extending from Ramanathapuram District of Tamil Nadu to Nellore District of Andhra Pradesh. Much of the ecoregion is densely settled, and has been substantially altered by human activity, including agriculture, grazing, and forestry, over the centuries. The ecoregion is home to the metropolis of Chennai (Madras), and a number of other cities, including Pondicherry, Thanjavur, Kanchipuram and Nellore. It is estimated that 95 per cent of the original forest cover has been cleared, and the species composition of the remaining forests have been altered by intensive human use including the removal of all the taller trees.

Rainfall averages 800 mm/year, and mostly falls during the highly variable northeast monsoon between October and December. Unlike most of the world's tropical and subtropical dry broadleaf forests, whose trees tend to lose their leaves during the dry season to conserve moisture, the East Deccan dry evergreen forests retain their leaves year round. Only two other ecoregions exhibit a similar pattern, the Sri Lanka dry-zone dry evergreen forests and the Southeastern Indochina dry evergreen forests.

...
Wikipedia