classification scheme, and includes moist forests, wet forests, and rainforests. The biome includes several types of forests: •
Lowland equatorial evergreen rain forests, commonly known as
tropical rainforests, are forests which receive high rainfall (
tropical rainforest climate with more than 2000 mm, or 80 inches, annually) throughout the year. These forests occur in a belt around the equator, with the largest areas in the
Amazon basin of South America, the
Congo Basin of central
Africa, the
Wet Tropics of Queensland in Australia and parts of the
Malay Archipelago. About half of the world's tropical rainforests are in the South American countries of
Brazil and
Peru.
Rainforests now cover less than 6% of Earth's land surface. Scientists estimate that more than half of all the world's plant and animal species live in tropical rainforests. •
Tropical seasonal forests, also known as
moist deciduous,
monsoon or
semi-evergreen (mixed) seasonal forests, have a
monsoon or wet
savannah climates (as in the
Köppen climate classification): receiving high overall rainfall with a warm summer
wet season and (often) a cooler winter
dry season. Some trees in these forests drop some or all of their leaves during the winter dry season. These forests are found in
South Florida, parts of South America, in
Central America and around the
Caribbean, in coastal
West Africa, parts of the
Indian subcontinent, Northern Australia and across much of
Indochina. •
Montane rain forests are found in cooler-climate mountainous areas. Those with elevations high enough to regularly encounter low-level cloud cover are known as
cloud forests. •
Flooded forests, including
freshwater swamp forests and
peat swamp forests. •
Manigua a low, often impenetrable dense forest of tangled tropical shrub and small trees. It is usually found in marshy areas but also on dry land in certain places. The term is used in
Cuba, the
Dominican Republic,
Puerto Rico and
Colombia. ==Notable ecoregions==