Qualla: Mato Grosso Tropical Dry Forests

Mato Grosso Tropical Dry Forests: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Every-leaf-that-trembles, CC BY-SA 4.0. The map gives it a code - NT0140 - as if it were a file number, but on the ground it is one of the largest forest ecosystems on Earth most people have never heard of. The Mato Grosso tropical dry forests spread across 41.3 million hectares of central Brazil, roughly the size of California and Florida combined. This is the forest that stops being Amazon and is not quite Cerrado; a transitional belt where the great rainforest shades into the dry savanna of the Brazilian highlands. It is a boundary with its own ecology, its own creatures, and since the 1970s, its own long emergency.

Image: Every-leaf-that-trembles | CC BY-SA 4.0

Mato Grosso Tropical Dry Forests: Where the Amazon Gives Way

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Juliane Fladzinski, CC BY-SA 4.0. Fly south from the Amazon basin and the canopy below begins to open. Trees shorten, gaps widen, and patches of grassland appear between the forest stands. This is the Mato Grosso dry forest in its native logic. It is not one continuous cover but a mosaic - dry forest, gallery for...

Image: Juliane Fladzinski | CC BY-SA 4.0

Mato Grosso Tropical Dry Forests: Three Ranges and a River's Source

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ibama from Brasil, CC BY 2.0. The terrain is not flat. The Serra do Cachimbo cradles the northeastern edge, the Serra dos Caiabis and Serra Formosa break the eastern horizon. All three are well-drained savanna ridges that sit higher than the surrounding plain. This is where the Xingu River begins - the Alto-X...

Image: Ibama from Brasil | CC BY 2.0

Mato Grosso Tropical Dry Forests: A Census of Life

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ibama from Brasil, CC BY 2.0. In 1967 and 1968 the British Royal Society and Royal Geographical Society mounted an expedition to the upper Xingu. What they found helped define what this ecoregion meant ecologically. They recorded 46 genera of rodents, including the capybara, the world's largest. They cataloge...

Image: Ibama from Brasil | CC BY 2.0

Mato Grosso Tropical Dry Forests: The Road Opens the Door

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ibama from Brasil, CC BY 2.0. The transformation began with pavement. The BR-070 and BR-364 highways, linking Brasilia to the state of Acre, cut through the region in the 1970s and 1980s. The BR-163, running from Cuiaba north to Santarem on the Amazon, followed. Each road was both a promise and a wound. They ...

Image: Ibama from Brasil | CC BY 2.0

Mato Grosso Tropical Dry Forests: The Xingu Refuge

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ibama from Brasil, CC BY 2.0. Not all of it is gone, and the reason is human as much as ecological. The Xingu Indigenous Park, created in 1961 by the brothers Villas Boas, sits at the heart of the ecoregion and protects both forest and the several indigenous peoples who live within it. The park is not a fortr...

Image: Ibama from Brasil | CC BY 2.0