Cardamom Mountains - Ecology

Ecology

These relatively isolated mountains now form an important tropical moist broadleaf forest ecoregion, the Cardamom Mountains Moist Forests Ecoregion. One of the largest and still mostly unexplored forests in southeast Asia, it is separated from other rainforests in the region by the large Khorat Plateau to the north. The Vietnamese Phú Quốc island off the coast of Thailand has similar vegetation and is included in the ecoregion.

Most of the region is covered in evergreen rain forest with a different type of thick evergreens above 700m and areas of dwarf conifer Dacrydium elatum forest on the southern slopes of the Elephant Mountains and an area of Tenasserim Pine dominated forest on the Kirirom plateau. Hopea pierrei, an endangered canopy tree rare elsewhere, is relatively abundant in the Cardamom Mountains. Other angiosperm tree species are Anisoptera costata, Anisoptera glabra, Dipterocarpus costatus, Hopea odorata, Shorea hypochra, Caryota urens and Oncosperma tigillarium. Other conifers include Pinus kesiya, Dacrycarpus imbricatus, Podocarpus neriifolius, P. pilgeri and Nageia wallichiana.