the world s fifthlargest country it covers of the south american continent s surface and extends about km along the atlantic coast owing to its size its physical characteristics vary enormously as do climate vegetation and landuse patterns accordingly it is typically divided into six large terrestrial ecosystems or biomes amazon cerrado caatinga atlantic forest pantanal and pampa box the atlantic forest and cerrado biomes are two of the world s biodiversity hotspots chapter brazil also has vast coastal and marine areas it hosts rich coral reef ecosystems and has the world s largest contiguous area of mangroves extension of agriculture and cattle farming natural resource extraction and infrastructure and development are the most significant causes of habitat loss figure