- Upper Guinean forests
The Upper Guinean forests is a tropical moist forest region of
West Africa . The Upper Guinean forests extend fromGuinea andSierra Leone in the west throughLiberia ,Côte d'Ivoire andGhana toTogo in the east, and a few hundred kilometers inland from the Atlantic coast. A few enclaves ofmontane forest lie further inland in the mountains of central Guinea and central Togo andBenin . In the drier interior, the Upper Guinean forests yield to theGuinean forest-savanna mosaic , a belt of dry forests andsavanna s that lies between the coastal forests and the savannas and grasslands of the Sudan further north. TheDahomey Gap , a region of Togo and Benin where the Guinean forest-savanna mosaic extends to the Atlantic coast, separates the Upper Guinean forests from theLower Guinean forests to the east, which extend from eastern Benin throughNigeria ,Cameroon , and south along the coast of theGulf of Guinea . The Upper Guinean forests are aGlobal 200 ecoregion .The
World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) designated the Upper Guinean forests, which it calls the Guinean moist forests, as one of itsGlobal 200 critical regions for conservation. The WWF divides the Upper Guinean forests into threeecoregion s. TheWestern Guinean lowland forests extend from Guinea and Sierra Leone through Liberia and southeastern Côte d'Ivoire as far as theSassandra River .Guinean montane forests are found at higher elevations in the highlands of central Guinea, northern Sierra Leone, and eastern Côte d'Ivoire. TheEastern Guinean forests extend east from the Sassandra River through Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana to western Togo, with a few isolated enclaves further inland in the highlands of central Togo and Benin.External links
* [http://www.biodiversityhotspots.org/xp/Hotspots/west_africa/ Guinean Forests of West Africa (Conservation International)]
* [http://www.biodiversityhotspots.org/ImageCache/Hotspots/content/west_5fafrica_2d13/ci_5fmap13_2epdf/v1/ci_5fmap13.pdf Map of the Guinean Forests of West Africa (Conservation International)] (PDF file)
* [http://www.panda.org/about_wwf/where_we_work/ecoregions/guinean_moist_forests.cfm Guinean moist forests (World Wide Fund for Nature)]
* [http://herbaria.plants.ox.ac.uk/vfh/about/Projects/Ecosyn_book.html Woody Plants of Western African Forests(Reference to Upper Guinean Plants)]
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