Current page:

Distribution

Dry forests occur in disjunct patches throughout the Neotropics within a complex of vegetation types depending on local climatic, soil and topographic conditions. The largest areas of dry forest that existed before their widespread destruction were found in NE Brazil and on the Caribbean coast of Colombia and Venezuela. Smaller and more isolated areas of dry forest occur in dry valleys in the Andes in northern, Peru, southern Ecuador, and Colombia. Other areas of limited extent are in coastal Ecuador and adjacent northern Peru, the ‘Mato Grosso de Goiás’ in Central Brazil and scattered throughout the Brazilian cerrado biome on areas of fertile soils. In Mesoamerica, seasonally dry forests are concentrated along the Pacific coast from Guanacaste in northern Costa Rica, to just north of the Tropic of Cancer in the Mexican state of Sonora. Other significant stands are in the Yucatán Peninsula, and elsewhere in Mesoamerican smaller, isolated dry forest areas are found in interior dry valleys and on the Pacific coast of Panama. In the Caribbean, the most extensive stands of dry forest are found in Cuba, but they also occur on other islands including Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Jamaica and the Lesser Antilles, and reach their most northern position in Florida.