The Atlantic Forest is especially the second group of forests expressive in South America, just losing for the Amazon Forest, the largest of the planet. Denominated of Atlantic Pluvial Forest, it is located in the Mountain of the Sea, that makes part of the Tropical Forest Domain Atlantic. This Forest Domain extends relatively for a strip parallel to the Brazilian coast, from Big Rio of the North to Big Rio of the South, and it is constituted by " seas of hills " and " chapadões florestados ", with deep soils of perennial drainage.
The climate, in the area understood by the Atlantic pluvial forests, has two stations, defined mainly by the regime of rains, although it is variable plenty latitudinalmente. While in the Brazilian Northeast the annual medium temperatures vary around 24ºC, in the areas Southeast and South the annual averages are lower and the temperature occasionally can arrive for -6ºC.
The Mountain of the Sea, represented by a chain of coastal mountains, presents a series of interruptions, where the belt of the pluvial forests is also interrupted. The medium altitude in this chain of mountains is of 800 to 900 meters, with emergent picks with about 1.400 meters and scarps of up to 2 thousand meters. In the tops of the mountains they happen fields of rocky blooming and, excepcionalmente, above 1.700 meters, the forest gives place to altitude fields.
The Atlantic Forest extends along the mountains and of the encostas gone back to the sea, as well as in the coastal plain. She owes its existence to the high atmospheric humidity brought by the marine winds. The humid wind condenses in the coast, under the form of rains, when arising for the cold layers of larger altitude.

Besides the high pluviosidade, in the tops of the hills there is condensation of water in fog form. This happens even during the months of spring and they will see, in the hot hours of the day.
Nor the whole oriental coast of Brazil, even so, it presents identical climatic conditions and indexes compatible pluviométricos with the existence of pluvial forests. For this reason, they also happen natural interruptions of the forests, along the Mountain of the Sea.
Now, the Brazilian Atlantic forests meet almost completely desolated, just remaining about 5% of preserved forests of its original extension, of the time of the discovery of Brazil. The most representative portion than it remained he/she meets in the areas South and Southeast, where the relief of steep scarps hinders the access and the devastation THE pujante Atlantic Forest, with arboreal vegetation around 30 meters and trees that surpass the dossel, reaching 40 height meters, it presents intense vegetation arbustiva in the inferior stratum. It is a forest of great vegetable diversity, with a lot of samambaias, besides the arborescent ones, besides terrestrial orchids and palm trees, among which he/she meets the Euterpes edulis, with about 10 height meters and of whose log the palmito is extracted. Besides the rugs of mosses and countless mushrooms, the Atlantic Forest is very rich in lianas and epífitas, among the ones which the samambaias, orchids and bromélias. These last ones, with its leaves disposed in roseta, always retain a certain amount of water, conditioning a favorable habitat to the development of a private fauna, I eat the one of larvas and adults of several species of arthropods for example and of toads.
In a general way, the fauna in this forest is predominantly ombrófila, that is, adapted to the shade and not very tolerant to the humidity variations, temperature and heatstroke. As direct or indirect consequence of the knocked down of the forests, a lot of species have been reached.

Besides the terrestrial fauna, the Atlantic forest also has a rich fauna of fish that you/they inhabit the small streams that permeate the areas florestadas. Many of these fish are guided by the vision to locate food or reproductive partners, as well as for its social behaviors, and they are unable to survive in cloudy or clear waters, subject to the intense brightness, when it happens the removal of the forest. Besides, the maintenance of interesting temperatures in the streams and in the soil it is only possible thanks to the intense vegetable covering.
Besides the wealth in spineless, mainly arthropods, the Atlantic Forest possesses an important fauna of vertebrates. However, a lot of species are still ignored by the science and they take the risk of nor they be discovered if the process of destruction of the forests has pursuit.
One of the main characteristics of the fauna that lives at the Atlantic Forest, as well as in another tropical forests of the world, it is the fact of being diversified and marked by the presence of many endemic species. Several of these species they possess low densities populacionais, what characterizes a great number of rare species.
The preservation of the endemic species of the Atlantic Forest is extremely preoccupying, face to the current situation of devastation. Even the endemic species that don't still possess its populations reduced to a critical number they deserve special attention for they survive. As example can be mentioned that there is a great number of endemic species in the avifauna, that have as evolutionary center the Mountain of the Sea and that, with extremely restricted geographical distribution, they meet in vulnerabilidade situation. This is the case of the painter-true (splendid Tangara), in the forests of States of Pernambuco and Alagoas.
Among the Brazilian primates they are related about threatened of extinction 25 species and some of them are endemic of the Atlantic Forest. This is, for example, the situation of four species of mico-lions (Leontopithecus spp) and of the muriqui (Brachyteles aracnoides), the largest of the monkeys neotropicais.
The harmed areas of the Atlantic Forest are exactly the most important of the point of view conservacionista. They are the remainders of the forests of the south of Bahia and of the Espírito Santo, that you/they shelter the last copies of goods and species of plants and you encourage threatened of extinction. In the Southeast area, where great metropolises were developed as São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro in areas formerly of Atlantic Forest, spaces still exist relatively big where recently environmental and transformed protection areas were created, besides, in the Reservation of the Biosphere of the Atlantic forest. In them they are the last refuges of one of the richest ecosystems of the world.