Campinarana (NT0158, ), also called Rio Negro Campinarana, is a

neotropical The Neotropical realm is one of the eight biogeographic realms constituting Earth's land surface. Physically, it includes the tropical terrestrial ecoregions of the Americas and the entire South American temperate zone. Definition In bioge ...

ecoregion in the Amazon biome of the north west of

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

and the east of Colombia that contains vegetation adapted to extremely poor soil. It includes savanna, scrub and forest, and contains many endemic species of fauna and flora.

Location

Areas of campinarana, which may cover several thousand square kilometres, are found in the transitional region from the Guyana Shield to the Amazon basin. Large stretches of Campinarana are contained within the Japurá-Solimões-Negro moist forests, Negro-Branco moist forests,

Guianan piedmont and lowland moist forests The Guianan piedmont and lowland moist forests (NT0182) is an ecoregion in the south of Venezuela and the north of Brazil. It is in the Amazon biome. The ecoregion is relatively intact, largely protected by conservation units or indigenous territor ...

, Uatuma-Trombetas moist forests and

Guianan savanna The Guianan savanna (NT0707) is an ecoregion in the south of Venezuela, Guyana and Suriname and the north of Brazil. It is in the Amazon biome. The savanna covers an area of rolling upland plains on the Guiana Shield between the Amazon and Orinoco ...

. The campinarana ecoregion totals about . Campinarana is mainly found in flat flooded areas in the Rio Negro and Rio Branco basins in the border region between Colombia, Venezuela and Bazil, but patches are found throughout the Amazon region. Areas of white-sand soils and their characteristic campinarana vegetation are found in the

Serra do Cachimbo Serra do Cachimbo ( en, Cachimbo Mountains) is a low mountain range in Brazil, in the southern part of the state of Pará, located mostly in the municipalities of Altamira, Itaituba, Jacareacanga, and Novo Progresso. The Serra do Cachimbo compl ...

on the

Pará Pará is a state of Brazil, located in northern Brazil and traversed by the lower Amazon River. It borders the Brazilian states of Amapá, Maranhão, Tocantins, Mato Grosso, Amazonas and Roraima. To the northwest are the borders of Guyana ...

– Mato Grosso boundary, the Parecis plateau in Rondônia, the Atlantic coast near the mouth of the Amazon, and in

Maranhão Maranhão () is a state in Brazil. Located in the country's Northeast Region, it has a population of about 7 million and an area of . Clockwise from north, it borders on the Atlantic Ocean for 2,243 km and the states of Piauí, Tocantins and ...

. Similar vegetation is found in northern Peru, eastern Colombia and south western Venezuela.

Climate

Temperatures in the region average and average rainfall is .

Soil characteristics

Tropical soils are generally infertile, and white sand soils are among the most infertile of such soils, primarily composed of quartz sand. The white sands are found on

arenaceous Arenite ( Latin: ''arena'', "sand") is a sedimentary clastic rock with sand grain size between 0.0625 mm (0.00246 in) and 2 mm (0.08 in) and contain less than 15% matrix. The related adjective is ''arenaceous''. The equivalen ...

sediments on the low ''terra firme'' uplands, on natural levees in a flooded

Várzea forest A várzea forest is a seasonal floodplain forest inundated by whitewater rivers that occurs in the Amazon biome. Until the late 1970s, the definition was less clear and várzea was often used for all periodically flooded Amazonian forests. Althoug ...

, on restinga sand dunes in a coastal lowland, on

Cretaceous The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of ...

sandstone plateaus and on hill areas of granitic rocks. The soil type determines the ecosystem more than temperature or rainfall. Factors affecting the vegetation are poor drainage, extremely sandy soil, intense leaching and impermeable layers below the surface. Campinarana is typically found on leached white sands around circular swampy depressions in lowland tropical moist forest. The soil is low in nutrients, with highly acidic humus. A study at

San Carlos de Río Negro San Carlos de Río Negro is a town in Venezuela's Amazonas State. San Carlos de Río Negro is a small city of about 1200 inhabitants in the Venezuelan state of Amazonas. It serves as the administrative capital of the municipal district of Río ...

, near the confluence of the Guainia and

Casiquiare The Casiquiare river () is a distributary of the upper Orinoco flowing southward into the Rio Negro, in Venezuela, South America. As such, it forms a unique natural canal between the Orinoco and Amazon river systems. It is the world's largest ...

rivers in southern Venezuela, found the soils were similar to temperate

podzol In soil science, podzols are the typical soils of coniferous or boreal forests and also the typical soils of eucalypt forests and heathlands in southern Australia. In Western Europe, podzols develop on heathland, which is often a construct of ...

s. They had a thick humus layer, a highly leached A horizon, and a well developed Bh horizon at . Tropical rainfall over millions of years had intensely leached the soils, which had become infertile due to lack of a source of fresh parent material. They may be short of phosphorus and/or calcium. The water that drains the Campinarana is tea colored, often called blackwater. The low exchange capacity of the podzols lets decomposing organic matter dissolve in soil water as humic acids, from where it is carried into the nearby streams.

Ecology

Flora

Campinarana has very varied vegetation formations from fields to forests with thin trees. The

sclerophyll Sclerophyll is a type of vegetation that is adapted to long periods of dryness and heat. The plants feature hard leaves, short internodes (the distance between leaves along the stem) and leaf orientation which is parallel or oblique to direct ...

ous vegetation is adapted to the sandy soil, with high endemism and low diversity. Campinarana vegetation includes

savanna A savanna or savannah is a mixed woodland- grassland (i.e. grassy woodland) ecosystem characterised by the trees being sufficiently widely spaced so that the canopy does not close. The open canopy allows sufficient light to reach the ground to ...

, scrub and forests. The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics defines four subtypes, or formations, of vegetation: The forests are found higher up. They have trees up to from families that differ from those in the humid rain forest that surrounds the Campinarana. The scrub has bare sand, herbaceous plants, shrubs and trees less than high. The palm '' Barcella odora'' is endemic. It is found on the sides of the depressions. The savannah is mainly composed of grasses and lichens, found in the wet plains beside lakes and rivers.

Fauna

Fauna are less diverse in the campinarana than in the surrounding ecoregions. 153 species of mammals have been reported. Mammals with restricted distribution include

white-faced saki The white-faced saki (''Pithecia pithecia''), called the Guianan saki and the golden-faced saki, is a species of the New World saki monkey. They can be found in Brazil, French Guiana, Guyana, Suriname and Venezuela. This species lives in the und ...

(''Pithecia pithecia''),

golden-backed uakari The golden-backed uakari (''Cacajao melanocephalus'') or black-headed uakari, is a New World primate from the family Pitheciidae. It lives in the Amazon Rainforest, and is found in the countries of Brazil, Colombia, and Venezuela. It has black ...

(''Cacajao melanocephalus''), red-faced spider monkey (''Ateles paniscus''), mottle-faced tamarin (''Saguinus inustus''),

Isabelle's ghost bat Isabelle's ghost bat (''Diclidurus isabella'') is a bat species found in northwestern Brazil, Guyana, and Venezuela, and possibly Colombia. It was discovered in October 1916 by Emilie Snethlage, and described by Oldfield Thomas Michael R ...

(''Diclidurus isabella''),

Marinkelle's sword-nosed bat Marinkelle's sword-nosed bat (''Lonchorhina marinkellei'') is a bat species found in Colombia. In 2013, Bat Conservation International listed this species as one of the 35 species of its worldwide priority list of conservation. Its species name ...

(''Lonchorhina marinkellei''), least big-eared bat (''Neonycteris pusilla''), Ega long-tongued bat (''Scleronycteris ega''),

Brock's yellow-eared bat Brock's yellow-eared bat (''Vampyriscus brocki'') is a species of bat in the family Phyllostomidae, the leaf-nosed bats. It is native to Brazil, Colombia, Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana, and Peru , image_flag = Flag of Peru. ...

(''Vampyriscus brocki''),

yellow-throated squirrel The yellow-throated squirrel (''Sciurus gilvigularis'') is a tree squirrel in the genus ''Sciurus'' endemic to South America. It is found in Brazil, Guyana and Venezuela Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( e ...

(''Sciurus gilvigularis''), northern grass mouse (''Necromys urichi''),

black-tailed hairy dwarf porcupine The black-tailed hairy dwarf porcupine (''Coendou melanurus'') is a porcupine species from the family Erethizontidae. It is found in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Suriname and Venezuela. This species was formerly sometimes a ...

(''Coendou melanurus'') and

Tome's spiny rat Tome's spiny rat (''Proechimys semispinosus''), also known as Tomes' spiny rat or the Central American spiny rat, is a species of spiny rat distributed from Honduras to Ecuador. The IUCN has assessed its conservation status as being of "leas ...

(''Proechimys semispinosus''). Other mammals include

collared peccary The collared peccary (''Dicotyles tajacu'') is a species of artiodactyl (even-toed) mammal in the family Tayassuidae found in North, Central, and South America. It is the only member of the genus ''Dicotyles''. They are commonly referred to as ...

(''Pecari tajacu''),

white-lipped peccary The white-lipped peccary (''Tayassu pecari'') is a species of peccary found in Central and South America and the only member of the genus ''Tayassu''. Multiple subspecies have been identified. White-lipped peccaries are similar in appearance to ...

(''Tayassu pecari''),

South American tapir The South American tapir (''Tapirus terrestris''), also commonly called the Brazilian tapir (from the Tupi ''tapi'ira''), the Amazonian tapir, the maned tapir, the lowland tapir, the ''anta'' (Portuguese), and ''la sachavaca'' (literally "bushco ...

(''Tapirus terrestris''), jaguar (''Panthera onca'') and

red brocket The red brocket (''Mazama americana'') is a species of brocket deer from forests in South America, ranging from northern Argentina to Colombia and the Guianas. It also occurs on the Caribbean island of Trinidad (it also occurred on the island ...

(''Mazama americana''). Endangered mammals include

white-bellied spider monkey The white-bellied spider monkey (''Ateles belzebuth''), also known as the white-fronted or long-haired spider monkey, is an endangered species of spider monkey, a type of New World monkey. It is found in the north-western Amazon in Colombia, Ecu ...

(''Ateles belzebuth''),

black bearded saki The black bearded saki (''Chiropotes satanas'') is a species of New World monkey, native to the Amazon rainforest of South America, specifically to an area of north-eastern Brazil. It is one of five species of bearded saki. Bearded sakis are med ...

(''Chiropotes satanas''),

Fernandez's sword-nosed bat Fernandez's sword-nosed bat (''Lonchorhina fernandezi'') is a species of bat in the family Phyllostomidae. It is the smallest species of the '' Lonchorhina'' genus. It is endemic to Venezuela. In 2013, Bat Conservation International listed this ...

(''Lonchorhina fernandezi''),

(''Lonchorhina marinkellei'') and

giant otter The giant otter or giant river otter (''Pteronura brasiliensis'') is a South American carnivorous mammal. It is the longest member of the weasel family, Mustelidae, a globally successful group of predators, reaching up to . Atypical of muste ...

(Pteronura brasiliensis). 368 species of birds have been recorded, fewer than in the surrounding forest. Endemic species include

Rio Branco antbird The Rio Branco antbird (''Cercomacra carbonaria'') is a bird species in the family Thamnophilidae. It is found in Brazil ( Roraima) and Guyana. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests and subtropical or tropical mo ...

(''Cercomacra carbonaria''), spot-backed antwren (''Herpsilochmus dorsimaculatus''), chestnut-crested antbird (''Rhegmatorhina cristata'') and Orinoco piculet (''Picumnus pumilus''). Species with restricted distribution include

russet-backed oropendola The russet-backed oropendola (''Psarocolius angustifrons'') is a species of bird in the family Icteridae. It is found in wooded habitats in the highlands of the northern and central Andes and the Venezuelan Coastal Range, and in lowlands of the w ...

(''Psarocolius angustifrons''), white-bellied dacnis (''Dacnis albiventris''), dotted tanager (''Tangara varia''),

Serra do Mar tyrant-manakin The Serra do Mar tyrant-manakin (''Neopelma chrysolophum''), or Serra do Mar neopelma or the Serra tyrant-manakin, is a species of bird in the Pipridae, or manakin family. It is endemic to humid mountain forest and woodland in south-eastern Braz ...

(''Neopelma chrysolophum''), yellow-crested manakin (''Heterocercus flavivertex'') and

crestless curassow The crestless curassow (''Mitu tomentosum'') is a species of bird in the family Cracidae, the chachalacas, guans, and curassows. It is found in Brazil, Colombia, Guyana, and Venezuela.Remsen, J. V., Jr., J. I. Areta, E. Bonaccorso, S. Claramunt ...

(''Mitu tomentosum''). Endangered birds include

(''Cercomacra carbonaria'') and yellow-bellied seedeater (''Sporophila nigricollis'').

Status

The

World Wildlife Fund The World Wide Fund for Nature Inc. (WWF) is an international non-governmental organization founded in 1961 that works in the field of wilderness preservation and the reduction of human impact on the environment. It was formerly named the Wo ...

classes the ecoregion as "Relatively Stable/Intact". None of the ecoregion is protected, but most of it is relatively intact due to its low productivity. Some areas have suffered from cattle grazing, with burning to maintain pasturage.

References

Bibliography

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