The Vegetation Types of the Coastal Forests of Eastern Africa Biodiversity Hotspot

This chapter reviews the currently present vegetation types with special emphasis on their distribution, status, and conservation threats along the biodiversity hotspot of the coastal forests of Eastern Africa. Currently, the coastal forests of Eastern Africa are composed of a mosaic of halophytic mangrove forests, lowland mixed rain forests, Brachystegia woodland, swamp and scrub forests, and riverine gallery forests. We found that the coastal forests of Eastern Africa biodiversity hotspot has three major forest categories, including the Eastern Africa closed canopy coastal forests, savanna woodland, and nonforest vegetation belonging to nine major vegetation groups with 11 subgroups of forests represented with several examples. Moreover, the environmental factors (i.e., soil and amount of rainfall) mostly influenced the vegetation types of the area. Again, millions of people living in the area depend very much on these forests for their daily survival as well as economic growth. Despite that, those forests are still found to harbor a variety of life forms, which convinced Conservation International to classify them as biodiversity hotspots. However, poverty is the major root cause for the unstable forest uses, thus causing threats to their survival in the area. These unsustainable forest uses include charcoal production, unsustainable logging, grazing, and conversion to other land uses.