Congolian rainforests


The Congolian rainforests are a broad belt of lowland tropical moist broadleaf forests which extend across the basin of the Congo River and its tributaries in Central Africa.

Geography

The Congolian forests cover southeastern Cameroon, Gabon, the Republic of the Congo, the northern and central Democratic Republic of the Congo, and portions of southern and southwestern Central African Republic.

Ecology

The Congolian rainforest is the world's second-largest tropical forest, spans six countries, and contains a quarter of the world's remaining tropical forest. With annual forest loss of 0.3% during the 2000s, the region has the lowest deforestation rate of any major tropical forest zone.
To the north, south, and southwest, the forests transition to drier forest-savanna mosaic, a mosaic of drier forests, savannas, and grasslands. To the west, the Congolian forests transition to the coastal Lower Guinean forests, which extend from southwestern Cameroon into southern Nigeria and Benin; these forests zones share many similarities and are sometimes known as the Lower Guinean-Congolian forests. To the east, the lowland Congolian forests transition to the highland Albertine Rift montane forests, which cover the mountains lining the Albertine Rift, a branch of the East African Rift system. The Congolian Forests are a global 200 ecoregion.

Ecoregions

The World Wide Fund for Nature divides the Congolian forests into several distinct ecoregions: