Sundaland heath forests
Ecoregion (WWF)
The Sundaland heath forests, also known as Kerangas forest, is a type of tropical moist forest found on the island of Borneo, which is divided between Brunei, Indonesia, and Malaysia, as well as on the Indonesian islands of Belitung and Bangka, which lie to the west of Borneo.
Setting
The word Kerangas, which means "land which cannot grow rice", comes from the Iban language. Heath forests occur on acidic sandy soils that are the result of the area's siliceous parent rocks. Permanently waterlogged heath forests are known as kerapah forests. Open-canopied woodlands are known as padang. The sandy soil of the heath forest are often lacking in nutrients; it is generally considered that nitrogen is the nutrient which is most lacking for plant growth in these forests. This is in contrast to many other lowland rain forests where phosphorus is considered to be lacking.
A more recent hypothesis, proposed by Proctor (1999), is that these forests are growing on soils which are highly acidic, such that hydrogen ion toxicity prevents the growth of non-adapted species. Moreover, heath forests' low soil pH hampers organic matter decomposition thus further slowing nutrient cycling.
Flora
The Sundaland heath forests are distinct from the surrounding Borneo lowland rain forests in species composition, structure, texture, and color.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sundaland heath forests” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.