With an area of 8,515,767 km², Brazil, the largest country in South America, covers half the continent. The five regions are the North (Amazon), Northeast (NE), Southeast, South and Center-West. The country’s wide variety of landscapes includes coastal mountain ranges, highland savannas, the semiarid region and the Amazon rainforest, among others, which are located in the country's six biomes: the Amazon, Cerrado, Caatinga, Atlantic Forest, Pantanal and Campos Sulinos (Pampa). The Atlantic Forest and the Amazon biomes have dense tropical forests. The Caatinga and Cerrado, both of which are sub-humid, are ecologically similar in that they have long dry seasons, few dense forests and much herbaceous plant cover, but the Caatinga, which is the only biome entirely within Brazil, is also subject to periodic droughts lasting several years.
Significant changes in land use are under way in most regions, while large areas remain with original vegetation, mainly in the North. For Brazil as a whole, 41% of the original plant cover has been cleared, but there are strong regional differences. Over the centuries, more than 90% of the Atlantic Forest has already been cleared, while clearing in the Amazon (20% overall to date) and Cerrado (50% overall to date) has been responsible for most of Brazil’s emissions of greenhouse gases in recent decades. Most of the Amazon is in protected areas including conservation units, indigenous lands and areas protected by the Forest Code, i.e. Legal Reserves (LR), which are 80% of rural properties, and Areas of Permanent Preservation (APPs), which are defined on each rural property according to drainage (between 30 and 500 meters on each side of streams and rivers) and topography (hilltops and slopes between 25o and 45o). The proportions of LR, areas that cannot be cleared, are much lower (20%) in the other biomes, especially the Caatinga, the Cerrado and the Pampas, which have received little international attention or national priority (e.g. they are not constitutional national heritage biomes). Only 3.27% of the NE is in protected areas (conservation units) and only 1.26% is in strict conservation units.
