Resource information
Biome: Tropical and Subtropical Moist Broadleaf Forests...
Size: 168,700 square miles...
Conservation Status: Vulnerable...
Introduction:
The Northern Indochina Subtropical Forests [IM0137] are globally outstanding for their biological diversity; this ecoregion has the highest species richness for birds among all ecoregions in the Indo-Pacific region and ranks third for mammal richness. The ecoregion sits astride a major zoogeographic ecotone, where the northern Palearctic and the southern Indo-Malayan faunas mix, allowing langurs to mix with red pandas and muntjac and musk deer to mingle. It is also a crossroads for the south Asian and east Asian floras as well as some ancient relicts that have found refuge here during the turbulent and variable geological past...
Description:
Location and General Description
This large ecoregion extends across the highlands of northern Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam and also includes most of southern Yunnan Province. A complex network of hills and river valleys extends south of the Yunnan Plateau into northern Indochina to include the middle catchments of the Red, Mekong, and Salween rivers. Mountains in this area are composed of intrusive igneous rocks or Paleozoic limestone and approach but seldom exceed 2,000 m, and major river valleys lie at 200-400 m elevation.
The climate throughout northern Indochina is summer monsoonal. Precipitation averages 1,200 to 2,500 mm per year, depending on location, and almost all of this consists of summer rain fetched from the Bay of Bengal and the South China Sea during April to October. From November to March, westerly subtropical winds drawn from continental Asia create dry conditions. These are moderated by easterly rain in southern Vietnam (WWF and IUCN 1995). Mean temperatures vary with elevation, but the spring premonsoon period is the hottest time of the year, and January is the coldest. Frost is known from the higher elevations, but it is infrequent...
