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Another factor causing the loss of rainforest is expanding urban areas. Littoral rainforest growing along coastal areas of eastern Australia is now rare due to ribbon development to accommodate the demand for seachange lifestyles. [47] Forests are being destroyed at a rapid pace. [48] [49] [50] Almost 90% of West Africa's rainforest has been ...
The structure of a tropical rainforest is stratified into layers, each hosting unique ecosystems. These include the emergent layer with towering trees, the densely populated canopy layer, the understory layer rich in wildlife, and the forest floor , which is sparse due to low light penetration.
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 Amazon rainforest alongside the Solimões River, a tropical rainforest. These forests are the most biodiverse and productive ecosystems in the world. Proportion and distribution of global forest area by climatic domain, 2020 [1] A forest is an ecosystem characterized by a dense community of trees. [2]
The Amazon biome has an area of 6,700,000 square kilometres (2,600,000 sq mi). [2] [a] The biome roughly corresponds to the Amazon basin, but excludes areas of the Andes to the west and cerrado (savannah) to the south, and includes lands to the northeast extending to the Atlantic ocean with similar vegetation to the Amazon basin. [2]
The ecosystem of Pacific temperate rainforests is so productive that the biomass on the best sites is at least four times greater than that of any comparable area in the tropics. [1] In sheer mass of living and decaying material - trees, mosses, shrubs, and soil - these forests are more massive than any other ecosystem on the planet.
The biome includes several types of forests: Lowland equatorial evergreen rain forests, commonly known as tropical rainforests, are forests which receive high rainfall (tropical rainforest climate with more than 2000 mm, or 80 inches, annually) throughout the year. [5]
One of the world's largest and most dense rainforests is the Amazon rainforest in South America. Rainforests are disappearing across the world, and at an alarming rate in Brazil. Since the 1980s, more than 153,000 square miles of Amazonian rainforest has fallen victim to deforestation. [6]