Editing Geography of Panama (section)

==Vegetation==
[[File:Panama veg 1981.jpg|thumb|upright=2.0|Panama's vegetation, 1981]]
Panama's tropical environment supports an abundance of plants. Forests dominate, interrupted in places by grasslands, scrub, and crops. Nearly 40 percent of Panama is wooded. Deforestation is a continuing threat to the rain-drenched woodlands. Tree cover has been reduced by more than 50 percent since the 1940s.

Subsistence farming, widely practiced from the northeastern jungles to the southwestern grasslands, consists largely of corn, bean, and tuber plots. [[Mangrove]] swamps occur along parts of both coasts, with [[banana]] plantations occupying deltas near Costa Rica. In many places, a multi-canopied rain forest abuts the swamp on one side of Panama and increases to the lower reaches of slopes in the other.