Abstract ID: 701

Amazonian Campos are Wetlands

A variety of natural, savanna-like, open habitats occurs scattered throughout the Amazon, including those vegetation types often referred to as campina, campinarana, campo, Amazonian cerrado, and white-sand savanna. These are extremely poorly understood phenomena and tend to be subject to generalizations based on only a few studied sites. We refer to all these habitats generically as “Amazonian campos”. They are highly varied in size, stature, plant species composition, and apparently even soils. However, most (perhaps all) of these areas have in common a hydrological regime in which the soils are waterlogged or completely flooded for at least part of every year. This probably has a causal relationship to the stunted stature of the vegetation and to plant species composition. We present a variety of evidence for flooding in these areas from numerous localities around the Amazon basin and argue that, as such, these habitats are in fact wetlands. They typically occur embedded in upland forest, far from the large rivers, and differ from floodplain ecosystems (várzea and igapó) in their shallow flooding by rainwater on poorly drained soils, rather than river overflow. We describe their biological importance as areas of remarkable plant and animal species endemism, including numerous recent discoveries of new species. These are delicate systems, threatened by farming, draining, fires, and mining sand, and yet their conservation is largely ignored. We propose that Amazonian campos be afforded the status of a unique biome with corresponding legal recognition, and that they be protected categorically under the Ramsar Treaty.

Session:  Public Policies and Sustainable Development - Sustainable management of natural resources and biodiversity in central Amazonian floodplains.

Presentation Type:  Oral