Country

Thailand: 15 ecoregions. Each with its climate now and toward 2050, and its conservation tier.

Fifteen ecoregions cross Thailand, nearly all of them Indomalayan forest of one kind or another. The north belongs to the Northern Indochina subtropical forests and the Kayah-Karen and Luang Prabang montane rain forests; the central plains and northeast to the Central Indochina dry forests and Southeast Indochina dry evergreen forests; the peninsula to the Tenasserim-South Thailand semi-evergreen and Peninsular Malaysian rain forests, fringed by Indochina and Myanmar Coast mangroves. That gradient, from monsoon-deciduous forest with a hard dry season in the interior to ever-wet rainforest in the far south, is the key planting fact: the same tropical warmth supports very different water regimes. Northern gardens work around a long dry spell and cooler hill nights; peninsular ones assume rain most of the year.