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The Southern New Guinea lowland rain forests is a
tropical moist forest Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests (TSMF), also known as tropical moist forest, is a subtropical and tropical forest habitat type defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature. Description TSMF is generally found in large, discon ...
ecoregion An ecoregion (ecological region) or ecozone (ecological zone) is an ecologically and geographically defined area that is smaller than a bioregion, which in turn is smaller than a biogeographic realm. Ecoregions cover relatively large areas of ...
in southeastern
New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; id, Papua, or , historically ) is the List of islands by area, world's second-largest island with an area of . Located in Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is separated from Mainlan ...
. The ecoregion covers portions of New Guinea's southern lowlands.


Geography

The ecoregion includes the foothills and lowlands south of New Guinea's Central Range. Above 1000 meters elevation, the lowland forests transition to the Central Range montane rain forests. The
Southern New Guinea freshwater swamp forests The Southern New Guinea freshwater swamp forests is a tropical moist forest ecoregion in southern New Guinea. The ecoregion includes the extensive swamp forests of southern and western New Guinea. Geography New Guinea is home to extensive sw ...
ecoregion covers extensive areas of the
Fly River The Fly River is the third longest river in the island of New Guinea, after the Sepik River and Mamberamo River, with a total length of and the largest by volume of discharge in Oceania, the largest in the world without a single dam in its cat ...
lowlands to the south, and the lower reaches of some other rivers that drain from the highlands to the sea. The
Trans-Fly savanna and grasslands The Trans Fly savanna and grasslands are a lowland ecoregion on the south coast of the island of New Guinea in both the Indonesian and Papua New Guinean sides of the island. With their monsoon and dry season climate these grasslands are quite ...
cover the southern tip of New Guinea.


Climate

The ecoregion has a humid tropical climate. The slopes of the Central Range above 100 meters elevation include some of the rainiest portions of New Guinea.


Flora

Broadleaf evergreen rain forests cover most of the ecoregion. Alluvial forests lie in the plains, and hill forests cover the foothills of the Central Range. There are smaller areas of semi-evergreen forest, swamp forest, and savanna.


Fauna

The ecoregion has 69 species of mammals, principally
marsupial Marsupials are any members of the mammalian infraclass Marsupialia. All extant marsupials are endemic to Australasia, Wallacea and the Americas. A distinctive characteristic common to most of these species is that the young are carried in a p ...
s,
bat Bats are mammals of the order Chiroptera.''cheir'', "hand" and πτερόν''pteron'', "wing". With their forelimbs adapted as wings, they are the only mammals capable of true and sustained flight. Bats are more agile in flight than most bi ...
s, and murid rodents. There are no strict endemic species. There are 344 species of birds in the ecoregion. The largest bird in the ecoregion is the flightless
southern cassowary The southern cassowary (''Casuarius casuarius''), also known as double-wattled cassowary, Australian cassowary or two-wattled cassowary, is a large flightless black bird. It is one of the three living species of cassowary, alongside the dwarf ...
(''Casuarius casuarius'').


Protected areas

A 2017 assessment found that 5,841 km², or 5%, of the ecoregion is in protected areas. About three-quarters of the ecoregion is still forested.Eric Dinerstein, David Olson, et al. (2017). An Ecoregion-Based Approach to Protecting Half the Terrestrial Realm, BioScience, Volume 67, Issue 6, June 2017, Pages 534–545; Supplemental material 2 table S1b

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External links

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References

{{reflist Australasian ecoregions Ecoregions of Indonesia Ecoregions of New Guinea Ecoregions of Papua New Guinea Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests