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A single hectare of rainforest may contain 42,000 different species of insect, up to 807 trees of 313 species and 1,500 species of higher plants. [5] Tropical rainforests have been called the " world's largest pharmacy ", because over one quarter of natural medicines have been discovered within them.
A natural rainforest emits and absorbs vast quantities of carbon dioxide. On a global scale, long-term fluxes are approximately in balance, so that an undisturbed rainforest would have a small net impact on atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, [32] though they may have other climatic effects (on cloud formation, for example, by recycling water ...
Tropical rainforest ecosystems include significant areas of biodiversity, often coupled with high species endemism. [4] Rainforests are home to half of all the living animal and plant species on the planet and roughly two-thirds of all flowering plants can be found in rainforests.
Species evenness is the relative number of individuals of each species in a given area. [181] Species richness [182] is the number of species present in a given area. Species diversity [183] is the relationship between species evenness and species richness. There are many ways to measure biodiversity within a given ecosystem.
A portion of the temperate rain forest region of North America, the largest area of temperate zone rainforests on the planet, is the Pacific temperate rain forests ecoregion, which occur on west-facing coastal mountains along the Pacific coast of North America, from Kodiak Island in Alaska to northern California, and are part of the Nearctic realm.
The biodiversity of plant species is the highest on Earth with one 2001 study finding a quarter square kilometer (62 acres) of Ecuadorian rainforest supports more than 1,100 tree species. [54] A study in 1999 found one square kilometer (247 acres) of Amazon rainforest can contain about 90,790 tonnes of living plants.
Ecological classification or ecological typology is the classification of land or water into geographical units that represent variation in one or more ecological features. . Traditional approaches focus on geology, topography, biogeography, soils, vegetation, climate conditions, living species, habitats, water resources, and sometimes also anthropic factors.
Borneo rainforest. Some tropical forest types are difficult to categorize. While forests in temperate areas are readily categorized on the basis of tree canopy density, such schemes do not work well in tropical forests. [1] There is no single scheme that defines what a forest is, in tropical regions or elsewhere.