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The tropical rainforests of South America contain the largest diversity of species on Earth. [1] [2] Tropical rainforest climate zones (Af). Tropical forests: from the UN FRA2000 report. Tropical rainforests are dense and warm rainforests with high rainfall typically found between 10° north and south of the Equator.
A tropical rainforest climate is a tropical climate sub-type usually found within 10 to 15 degrees latitude of the equator. There are some other areas at higher latitudes, such as Bermuda, the coast of southernmost Florida, United States (Florida Keys), and Okinawa, Japan that fall into the tropical rainforest climate category.
Regions that contain tropical rainforest climate mainly include the upper Amazon basin of South America, the Northern Zaire (Congo) basin of Africa, and the islands of the East Indies. [10] The tropical rainforest climate differs from other subtypes of tropical climates as it has more kinds of trees due to its precipitation. [12]
The Amazon rainforest, [a] also called Amazon jungle or Amazonia, is a moist broadleaf tropical rainforest in the Amazon biome that covers most of the Amazon basin of South America. This basin encompasses 7,000,000 km 2 (2,700,000 sq mi), [ 2 ] of which 6,000,000 km 2 (2,300,000 sq mi) are covered by the rainforest . [ 3 ]
The original tropical rainforests, which covered the planet's land surface, were the type of flora that covered Earth.Other canopy forests expanded north-south of the equator during the Paleogene epoch, around 40 million years ago, as a result of the emergence of drier, cooler climates.
The temperate Valdivian, matorral, and Magellanic ecoregions are isolated from the subtropical/tropical forests that dominate northern South America by such landscapes as the Atacama desert (north of the matorral), the Andes Mountains, and the dry, rain-shadow Patagonian steppe east of the Andes.
Tropical climate distribution. Tropical climates are characterized by constant high temperatures (at sea level and low elevations); all 12 months of the year have average temperatures of 18 °C (64.4 °F) or higher; and generally high annual precipitation. They are subdivided as follows:
These forests occur in a belt around the equator, with the largest areas in the Amazon basin of South America, the Congo Basin of central Africa, the Wet Tropics of Queensland in Australia and parts of the Malay Archipelago. About half of the world's tropical rainforests are in the South American countries of Brazil and Peru.