| Trinidad and Tobago dry forests | |
|---|---|
 Tropical dry forest inChacachacare | |
 Ecoregion territory (in red) | |
| Ecology | |
| Realm | Neotropical |
| Biome | tropical and subtropical dry broadleaf forests |
| Borders | |
| Geography | |
| Country | Trinidad and Tobago |
| Conservation | |
| Conservation status | Critical/Endangered[1] |
Trinidad and Tobago dry forests aretropical dry forests located primarily in western and southern parts of the island ofTrinidad, in southern parts of the island ofTobago and onsmaller offshore islands includingChacachacare,Monos,Huevos,Gaspar Grande,Little Tobago andSaint Giles Island.
Tropical dry forests inTrinidad and Tobago include bothdeciduous andsemi-evergreen forests. A recent work byHoward Nelson suggests that areas which were formerly classified asevergreen forest also fit the criteria for dry forests. The major areas of dry forest in Trinidad include theChaguaramas peninsula in the northwest, areas along the south coast of the island, fromCedros toMorne Diablo, and areas along the east coast including parts of theGuayaguayare,Mayaro andManzanilla coastline. In addition, areas along the west coast includingSan Fernando Hill and much of the formerSugar Belt also would have originally supported dry forest. In Tobago much of the southwest of the island originally supported dry forests.
The dominant paradigm inphytosociology inTrinidad and Tobago has been the work ofJohn Stanley Beard carried out in the 1940s. His description of forest associations wasphysiognomically based. Many of his forest associations overlap modern ideas ofdry andmoist forests. Most work which seeks to classify dry forest in this country,e.g.,WWF classification,[1] underestimate the extent of dry forest in Trinidad and Tobago by restricting it to the driest category of forests that Beard came up with for Trinidad.
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