The Cerrado (Portuguese: "closed," or "inaccessible") is a vast tropical savanna ecoregion of Brazil.

The Cerrado covers an area of 1,916,900 km² (740,100 square miles), including the state of Goiás and the Federal District, most of Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, and Tocantins, the western portions of Minas Gerais and Bahia, the southern portion of Maranhão and Piauí, small portions of São Paulo and Paraná, and extends into northeastern Paraguay and eastern Bolivia. The Cerrado accounts for 22% of Brazil's area, an area the size of Alaska.

The cerrado is characterised by an enormous range of plant and animal biodiversity, but these natural riches are increasingly threatened by single-crop plantations (monoculture; particularly soybeans), the expansion of agriculture in general, and the burning of the vegetation for charcoal.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Norman Borlaug has described the cerrado as one of Earth's last remaining arable frontiers for the expansion of agriculture. The 2006 World Food Prize was awarded to former Brazilian Minister of Agriculture Alysson Paolinelli, soil scientist Edson Lobato (also of Brazil), and American soil scientist A. Colin McClung for their leadership in soil science and policy implementation that opened the cerrado to agricultural and food production.

See also: List of plants of Cerrado vegetation of Brazil

External links

• Cerrado - Brazilian Governament (in English)
• Nature Conservancy in Brazil - Cerrado) (in English)
• Cerrado (World Wildlife Fund) (in English)
• "2006 World Food Prize winners opened Brazil's 'closed lands'" - press release (in English)

Geography of Brazil | Tropical and subtropical grasslands, savannas, and shrublands | Neotropic | Biomes

Cerrado | Cerrado | Cerrado | סראדו | Cerrado | Cerrado | Cerrado