Tropical vegetation

Tropical vegetation is any vegetation in tropical latitudes. Plant life that occurs in climates that are warm year-round is in general more biologically diverse that in other latitudes. Some tropical areas may receive abundant rain the whole year round, but others have long dry seasons which last several months and may vary in length and intensity with geographic location. These seasonal droughts have great impact on the vegetation, such as in the Madagascar spiny forests.

Plant species native to the tropics found in tropical ecosystems are known as tropical plants. Some examples of tropical ecosystem are the Guinean Forests of West Africa, the Madagascar dry deciduous forests and the broadleaf forests of the Thai highlands and the El Yunque National Forest in Puerto Rico.

The term 'Tropical vegetation' often is used in the sense of lush and luxuriant, but not all the vegetation of the areas of the Earth under a tropical climate could be adequately defined as such. Despite their lush appearance, often the soils of tropical forests are low in nutrient content making them quite vulnerable to slash-and-burn deforestation techniques, which are sometimes an element of shifting cultivation agricultural systems. Tropical vegetation may include the following habitat types:

Tropical rainforest ecosystems include significant areas of biodiversity, often coupled with high species endemism. Rainforests are home to half of all the living animal and plant species on the planet and roughly two-thirds of all flowering plants can be found in rainforests. The most representative are the Borneo rainforest, one of the oldest rainforests in the world, the Brazilian and Venezuelan Amazon Rainforest, as well as the eastern Costa Rican rainforests.

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