Pantanal: South America's Wetland Jewel - Hardcover

Theo Allofs is an award-winning wildlife and nature photographer, whose images regularly appear in Smithsonian, National Geographic, Outdoor Photographer, GEO and American Photo.

Russell A. Mittermeier is the president of Conservation International, of which all the authors are members.

Introduction

Home to some of the most spectacular concentrations of wildlife on Earth, the Pantanal region of Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay is the world's largest contiguous wetland on the planet. Located between 16° and 22° South, and 55° and 58° West (see map page 7), it covers some 210,000 sq km. This area, about half the size of California, consists mainly of the low-altitude (average 80-180 m) floodplain of the Rio Paraguay and its tributaries, which drop off the Brazilian Cerrado, or planalto (central plateau). This huge, seasonally-flooded swampland is far more impressive and beautiful than any comparable region found elsewhere in the world.

The Pantanal covers a vast expanse in the middle of South America. With an average width of 500 km, it stretches in a north-south direction some 950 km along the upper Rio Paraguay basin. It is bordered to the east by the savannahs and woodlands of the Brazilian Cerrado, extending as far as the Chapada dos Parecis; to the northwest by the semideciduous forests of the transition zone between Amazonia and the Cerrado; to the southwest by the Chaco formations (a wetland ecosystem of open vegetation and temperate climate) of Paraguay and Bolivia; and to the south by low-lying mountains, the Serras da Bodoquena and Maracajú. To the west, it gently undergoes a transition into the dry forests of extreme eastern Bolivia along the Serra do Amolar. Some 70 percent of the Pantanal lies within the Brazilian states of Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul (which accounts for 40 percent and 60 percent, respectively, of the Brazilian side), with the remaining land lying within Bolivia (20 percent) and Paraguay (10 percent).

This enormous floodplain has been traditionally divided into subregions, based on history, soil type, vegetation, and its main rivers. Cáceres, Poconé, Barao de Melgaço, Paiaguás, Paraguai, Nhecolândia, Abobral, Aquidauana, Miranda, and Nabileque are some of the main Brazilian subregions.