El Cerrado (Portuguese: "espeso", "dense") is a broad ecoregion of tropical savannah that extends mainly into Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia. The Cerrado covers 1,916,900 km² which includes the state of Goiás the Federal District, most of Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, and the state of Tocantins, the western part of Minas Gerais and Bahia, the southern part Maranhão and Piauí, small parts of São Paulo and Paraná. This ecosystem occupies 22% of ​​Brazil, even greater than the area of ​​Alaska. The Cerrado extends, likewise, to the east of Bolivia and into the northeast of Paraguay.

During the early Holocene, the vegetation corresponding to the Cerrado expanded and occupied a larger area than the current one. Today there are "islands" of Cerrado in the area of ​​semi-deciduous forests of the Atlantic Forest, which would be the remnant of this greater area of ​​distribution of Cerrado vegetation that it reached 10,000-7,000 years ago.

This natural region borders to the north with the Amazon region and to the west and southwest with the Gran Chaco, with respect to which it maintains great fauna and landscape similarities. The Cerrado is characterized by an enormous biodiversity of plants and animals.

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