Matorral

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Matorral is a Spanish word for shrubland, thicket or bushes.[1] Matorral originally referred to the Matorral shrublands of Spain's Mediterranean climate regions, but the term followed Spanish settlement of the Americas, and is used to refer to both Mediterranean-climate[2] and xeric shrublands in Mexico[3], Chile[2], and elsewhere. Mediterranean shrublands are often part of a mosaic landscape, interspersed with forests, woodlands, grassland, and scrublands.[4][5]

In Portugal, the term mato or matagal is used to refer to the scrublands, or heaths, that formed on the Cambrian and Silurian schists in the north and central parts of Portugal. The term was imported to the New World, where it was used to refer to the great scrublands, Mato Grosso, of western Brazil.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Velazquez, Mariano (comp.) (1973) "Matorral" A New Pronoucing Dictionary of the Spanish and English Languages (rev. ed.) Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, p. 431
  2. ^ a b Jiménez, Héctor E. and Armesto, Juan J. (December 1992) "Importance of the Soil Seed Bank of Disturbed Sites in Chilean Matorral in Early Secondary Succession" Journal of Vegetation Science 3(5): pp. 579-586, p. 579
  3. ^ Camargo-Ricalde, Sara Lucía; Dhillion, Shivcharn S. and Grether, Rosaura (October 2002) "Community Structure of Endemic Mimosa Species and Environmental Heterogeneity in a Semi-Arid Mexican Valley"Journal of Vegetation Science 13(5): pp. 697-704
  4. ^ Arroyo, J. and Maranon, T. (March 1990) "Community Ecology and Distributional Spectra of Mediterranean Shrublands and Heathlands in Southern Spain" Journal of Biogeography 17(2): pp. 163-176
  5. ^ Lavorel, Sandra (1999) "Ecological Diversity and Resilience of Mediterranean Vegetation to Disturbance" Diversity and Distributions 5(1/2): pp. 3-13

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