The Upper Guinean forests is a
tropical seasonal forest region of
West Africa. The Upper Guinean forests extend from
Guinea
Guinea ( ),, fuf, 馂馂き馂げ馂か, italic=no, Gine, wo, Gine, nqo, 邧邔攥撸邖攉, bm, Gine officially the Republic of Guinea (french: R茅publique de Guin茅e), is a coastal country in West Africa. It borders the Atlantic Ocean to the we ...
and
Sierra Leone in the west through
Liberia
Liberia (), officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country on the West African coast. It is bordered by Sierra Leone to Liberia鈥揝ierra Leone border, its northwest, Guinea to its north, Ivory Coast to its east, and the Atlantic Ocean ...
,
C么te d'Ivoire
Ivory Coast, also known as C么te d'Ivoire, officially the Republic of C么te d'Ivoire, is a country on the southern coast of West Africa. Its capital is Yamoussoukro, in the centre of the country, while its largest city and economic centre is ...
and
Ghana to
Togo in the east, and a few hundred kilometers inland from the
Atlantic coast. A few enclaves of
montane forest lie further inland in the mountains of central Guinea and central Togo and
Benin.
[
In the drier interior, the Upper Guinean forests yield to the Guinean forest-savanna mosaic, a belt of dry forests and savannas that lies between the coastal forests and the savannas and grasslands of the ]Sudan
Sudan ( or ; ar, 丕賱爻賵丿丕賳, as-S奴d膩n, officially the Republic of the Sudan ( ar, 噩賲賴賵乇賷丞 丕賱爻賵丿丕賳, link=no, Jumh奴riyyat as-S奴d膩n), is a country in Northeast Africa. It shares borders with the Central African Republic t ...
further north. The Dahomey Gap, a region of Togo and Benin where the Guinean forest-savanna mosaic extends to the Atlantic coast, separates the Upper Guinean forests from the Lower Guinean forests to the east, which extend from eastern Benin through Nigeria, Cameroon, and south along the coast of the Gulf of Guinea. The Upper Guinean forests are a Global 200 ecoregion.
The Guinean moist forests are much affected by winds from the hot dry area to the north and the cool Atlantic currents. This gives the region a very seasonal climate with over of rain falling in some areas in the wet season. Over 2000 species of vascular plant have been recorded in the ecoregion, and mammals found here include the chimpanzee
The chimpanzee (''Pan troglodytes''), also known as simply the chimp, is a species of great ape native to the forest and savannah of tropical Africa. It has four confirmed subspecies and a fifth proposed subspecies. When its close relative th ...
(''Pan troglodytes''), leopard
The leopard (''Panthera pardus'') is one of the five extant species in the genus '' Panthera'', a member of the cat family, Felidae. It occurs in a wide range in sub-Saharan Africa, in some parts of Western and Central Asia, Southern Russia, a ...
(''Panthera pardus''), pygmy hippopotamus (''Hexaprotodon liberiensis''), Ogilby's duiker (''Cephalophus ogilbyi''), Nimba otter shrew (''Micropotamogale lamottei'') and the African golden cat
The African golden cat (''Caracal aurata'') is a wild cat endemic to the rainforests of West and Central Africa. It is threatened due to deforestation and bushmeat hunting and listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List. It is a close relative o ...
(''Profelis aurata'').[ There are twenty-one endemic/near-endemic and seasonal forest birds in the ecoregion; three avian species, the Nimba flycatcher (''Melaenornis annamarulae''), the Gola malimbe (''Malimbus ballmanni'') and the spot-winged greenbul (''Phyllastrephus leucolepis'') are further restricted in distribution to the western forests only.][
* The Eastern Guinean forests, extending east from the Sassandra River through C么te d'Ivoire and Ghana to western Togo, with a few isolated pockets further inland, in the highlands of central Togo and Benin.][
* The Guinean montane forests are found at higher elevations in the Guinea Highlands, which extend through central and southeastern Guinea, northern Sierra Leone, and eastern C么te d'Ivoire.][
]
See also
* Guinean Forests of West Africa
*Phytochorion
A phytochorion, in phytogeography, is a geographic area with a relatively uniform composition of plant species. Adjacent phytochoria do not usually have a sharp boundary, but rather a soft one, a transitional area in which many species from both re ...
References
{{reflist
External links
Guinean Forests of West Africa (Conservation International)Map of the Guinean Forests of West Africa (Conservation International)
(PDF
Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...
file)
Woody Plants of Western African Forests(Reference to Upper Guinean Plants)
Afrotropical realm
Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests
Endemic Bird Areas