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Concept
Cloud forest
Summary
A cloud forest, also called a water forest, primas forest, or tropical montane cloud forest, is a generally tropical or subtropical, evergreen, montane, moist forest characterized by a persistent, frequent or seasonal low-level cloud cover, usually at the canopy level, formally described in the International Cloud Atlas (2017) as silvagenitus. Cloud forests often exhibit an abundance of mosses covering the ground and vegetation, in which case they are also referred to as mossy forests. Mossy forests usually develop on the saddles of mountains, where moisture introduced by settling clouds is more effectively retained.
Cloud forests are among the most biodiversity rich ecosystems in the world with a large number of species directly or indirectly depending on them.
Other moss forests include black spruce/feathermoss climax forest, with a moderately dense canopy and a forest floor of feathermosses including Hylocomium splendens, Pleurozium schreberi and Ptilium crista-castrensis. These weft-form mosses grow in boreal moss forests.
The presence of cloud forests is dependent on local climate (which is affected by the distance to the sea), the exposition and the latitude (from 23°N to 25°S), and the elevation (which varies from 500 m to 4000 m above sea level). Typically, there is a relatively small band of elevation in which the atmospheric environment is suitable for cloud forest development. This is characterized by persistent fog at the vegetation level, resulting in the reduction of direct sunlight and thus of evapotranspiration. Within cloud forests, much of the moisture available to plants arrives in the form of fog drip, where fog condenses on tree leaves and then drips onto the ground below.
Annual rainfall can range from 500 to 10,000 mm/year and mean temperature between 8 and 20 °C (46.4 and 68 °F).
While cloud forest today is the most widely used term, in some regions, these ecosystems or special types of cloud forests are called mossy forest, elfin forest, montane thicket, and dwarf cloud forest.
Official source
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