Central dry evergreen riparian forest

Description

An evergreen forest consisting of large rainforest trees that fringe the rivers and major streams of Myanmar’s central dry zone. This ecosystem is heavily degraded and only small fragments in various states were found during our field studies. This ecosystem is likely to occur along major streams throughout the Ayeyarwady floodplain in Sagaing, Mandalay and possibly Bago. Buttressed trees are probably present in remnant vegetation (Davis, 1960), although much of these ecosystems are probably replaced now with village forests and plantings.

Assessment summary

We used a broad estimate of the former distribution of riparian forest and a recently developed dataset of tree cover to infer that up to 97.4% of this ecosystem has been lost since 1750. Remaining patches of this ecosystem are very small (often single remnant trees) and ongoing urbanisation and hardening of waterways is likely to be causing ongoing declines. Critically Endangered.