Where Can You Find a Rainforest in the United States

The Daintree Rainforest in Queensland, Commonwealth of australia.

A rainforest is a very dense, relatively warm, moisture wood. Rainforests tin can be tropical, subtropical, and temperate forests.

A tropical rainforest is ane that lies betwixt the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn.

A subtropical rainforest is 1 that lies immediately north or south of the tropics (north of the Tropic of Cancer and south of the Tropic of Capricorn) to virtually 35 degrees latitude. Air temperature in these forests rarely goes below freezing.

A temperate rainforest is 1 that lies n or due south of the subtropics and usually nearly the ocean, which moderates its climate.

An exceptional diversity of life forms tin can be seen in rainforests, which hold most of the earth's species of plants and animals, each with their own peculiar shapes, structures, and functions.

While it is a common misunderstanding that rainforests provide much of the world'due south oxygen (most rainforests do non yield much net oxygen, which is largely supplied past algae), they are vital in terms of biodiversity, climate regulation, sources of medicine, flood and soil loss prevention, and carbon dioxide assimilation.

1 Characteristics
ii Temperate rainforests
3 Tropical and subtropical rainforests
four Tropical trees
v Rainforest layers
- 5.1 Emergent layer
- v.2 Canopy layer
- v.3 Understory layer
- 5.4 Forest floor
6 Importance of rainforests
- 6.1 The rainforest as a source of drugs
7 Degradation of the rainforests
viii Rainforest facts
9 Bibliography
10 Credits

Characteristics

Rainforests are characterized past high rainfall, with definitions setting minimum normal almanac rainfall between 1.seven meters (about 5 1/2 feet) and 2 meters (about six 1/ii feet).

Rainforests once covered about 14 percent of the Earth, simply accept been reduced in size at present to simply about 6 percent of the Earth'southward surface. Some gauge that tropical rainforests cover 12 percent of the land surface. Even though half the rainforests of the world are gone, some speculate that they still agree more than than two-thirds of all plant and fauna species on Earth. It has been estimated that many hundreds of millions of new species of plants, insects, and microorganisms are even so undiscovered and as nevertheless unnamed by scientific discipline.

Despite the extensive growth of flora in a rainforest, the actual quality of the soil is quite poor because loftier rainfall tends to leach out soluble nutrients. Rapid bacterial decay prevents the accumulation of humus.

The undergrowth in a rainforest is restricted in many areas by the lack of sunlight at ground level. This makes it possible for people and other animals to walk through the forest. If the leafage canopy is destroyed or thinned for any reason, the ground beneath is soon colonized by a dense tangled growth of vines, shrubs, and small trees called jungle.

Temperate rainforests

Temperate rain forest in the Mount Hood Wilderness, Oregon, United states of america. This area, on the west side of the mountain, receives over ii.v meters of rain per year.

Temperate rainforests are coniferous or broadleaf forests that occur in the mid-latitudes in areas of loftier rainfall. While temperate forests in full general cover a large function of the globe, temperate rainforests simply occur in a few regions. Temperate rainforests can be found in western North America (British Columbia, southeastern Alaska, western Oregon and Washington, and northern California), the western Caucasus (Ajaria region of Georgia), the western Balkans, parts of Oceania (New Zealand, Tasmania, southeastern Australia), northwest Europe (British Isles and Norway), southern Chile, South Africa, and parts of Asia (Taiwan, and southern and western Nihon).

The temperate coniferous rain forests sustain the highest levels of biomass in whatever terrestrial ecosystem and are notable for copse of massive proportions, including redwoods and Douglas-fir. Temperate coniferous rainforests are quite rare, occurring in small areas of western North America, southwestern Due south America, and northern New Zealand.

Olympic Peninsula. Temperate pelting forests often abound right upwards to the shoreline.

Temperate rainforests are distinguished from other temperate forests by a few factors:

Rainfall: high rainfall (minimum two to 3 meters per year, depending on latitude), usually from moisture-laden winds off the ocean.
Proximity to the ocean: temperate rain forests depend on the proximity to the ocean to moderate seasonal variations in temperature, creating milder winters and cooler summers than continental-climate areas. Many temperate rain forests have summer fogs that keep the forests cool and moist in the hottest months.
Coastal mountains: temperate rain forests occur where mountains ranges are close to the declension; coastal mountains increment rainfall on the ocean-facing slopes.

Tropical and subtropical rainforests

Rainforest on Fatu-Hiva, Marquesas Islands

Tropical and subtropical rainforests are also known as tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests, and every bit tropical wet forests. They have too been chosen the "jewel of the earth," the "Earth's lungs," and even the "world's largest pharmacy" because of the big amount of natural medicines discovered there.

Tropical and subtropical rainforests are establish in a chugalug around the equator and in the humid subtropics, and are characterized by warm, boiling climates with high year-round rainfall. Tropical and subtropical regions with lower rainfall, or singled-out wet and dry seasons, are dwelling to tropical and subtropical dry broadleaf forests.

Tropical and subtropical rainforests be in the Amazon bowl (the Amazon Rainforest), Nicaragua (Los Guatuzos, Bosawás and Indio-Maiz), the southern Yucatan peninsula-El Peten-Belize contiguous area of Central America (including the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve), in much of equatorial Africa from Cameroon to the Democratic Commonwealth of Congo, in much of southeastern Asia from Myanmar to Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, eastern Queensland, Australia, and in some parts of the United States.

About one-half of the world'south tropical rainforests are in the Southward American countries of Brazil and Peru. Scientists judge that more than half of all the world's establish and beast species live in tropical rain forests.

While the Amazon Rainforest is largest in size, the Atlantica Rainforest near Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which has been reduced in size by over 90 percent, still holds more than biodiversity than the Amazon.

Characteristics of tropical rainforests include:

Rainfall: high, yr-round, sometimes with seasonal variation.
Temperature: ever warm
Soil: generally poor and leached.
Plants: high diversity
Animals: high diversity

Tropical trees

There are several common characteristics of tropical trees. Tropical species often possess ane or more of the following attributes non commonly seen in copse of higher latitudes.

Many species accept broad, woody flanges (buttresses) at the base of operations of the trunk. Originally believed to assist support the tree, now it is believed that the buttresses channel stem flow and its dissolved nutrients to the roots.

Trees are ofttimes well connected in the awning layer especially by the growth of woody climbers or lianas, plants with epiphytic adaptations, allowing them to grow on top of existing trees in the competition for sunlight.

Other characteristics that distinguish tropical species of trees from those of temperate forests include:

Exceptionally sparse bark, often only 1-2 mm thick. Unremarkably very smooth, although sometimes armed with spines or thorns;
Cauliflory, the development of flowers (and hence fruits) directly from the trunk, rather than at the tips of branches;
Big fleshy fruits that attract birds, mammals, and even fish every bit dispersal agents.

Rainforest layers

The rainforest can exist divided into four unlike parts, each with different plants and animals adapted for life in that item area.

Emergent layer

This layer contains the emergents—trees that tower above the awning. The trees are usually evergreens, which are able to withstand the harsh temperatures and loftier winds. Eagles, butterflies, and bats inhabit this layer.

Canopy layer

The densest areas of biodiversity are found in the wood awning, a more than or less continuous cover of foliage formed past next treetops.

The canopy, by some estimates, is domicile to 40 percent of all institute species, suggesting that perhaps half of all life on World could be found there. A quarter of all insect species are believed to exist in the rainforest canopy.

Scientists have long suspected the richness of the canopy as a habitat, but accept only recently developed practical methods of exploring it. As long agone as 1917, U.South. naturalist William Beebe declared that "another continent of life remains to exist discovered, not upon the Earth, but one to two hundred feet above it, extending over thousands of square miles."

True exploration of this habitat only began in the 1980s, when scientists developed methods to attain the canopy, such as firing ropes into the trees using crossbows. Exploration of the awning is still in its infancy, but other methods include the apply of balloons and airships to float in a higher place the highest branches, and the edifice of cranes and walkways planted on the forest flooring.

Understory layer

There is a space between the awning and the forest floor, which is known as the understorey (or understory). This is home to a number of birds, monkeys, snakes, and lizards. The leaves are much larger at this level. Insect life is also abundant.

Forest floor

Abroad from river banks, swamps, and clearings where dense undergrowth is found, the forest floor is relatively clear of vegetation, as little sunlight penetrates to basis level. This region receives only 2 percent of the rainforest's sunlight. Thus, simply peculiarly adapted plants tin can grow in this region. It also contains decaying plant and animal matter, which disappears speedily due to the lack of sunlight.

Importance of rainforests

Information technology is commonly believed, erroneously, that one of the key values of rainforests is that they provide much of the oxygen for the planet. However, most rainforests practise not in fact provide much net oxygen for the residuum of the world. Through factors such every bit the decomposition of dead plant thing, rainforests eat as much oxygen equally they produce, except in sure conditions (primarily swamp forests) where the expressionless plant thing does not decay, only is preserved underground instead (ultimately to form new coal deposits over plenty fourth dimension).

However, rainforests do act as major consumers of atmospheric carbon dioxide and may play a large role in cooling air that passes through them. As such, many scientists feel that the rainforests are of vital importance within the global climate system. Beingness integral to the water bicycle, if a rainforest is cleared, droughts increase and the expanse may get desert.

Rainforests are too major sources of biodiversity. Estimates of the percent of the earth'south species found in rainforests range from 50 percent to fifty-fifty 90 percent.

Rainforests provide a number of foods for people, including cocoa, coffee, fruits, nuts, and spices, equally well as products such equally rubber, tannins, resins, and gums.

Rainforest soils tend to be poor, due to leaching of the minerals past the high rainfall. Rainforests assistance to conserve h2o by soaking upwards the moisture, interim like a sponge and decreasing the take a chance of flooding. They also quickly recycle nutrients, utilizing shallow roots. With the extensive roots, erosion is also decreased.

The rainforest as a source of drugs

Tropical rain forests are called the "earth's largest pharmacy" because of the large corporeality of natural medicines discovered there. Many of the medicines that humans use come up from the rainforests.

Currently, over 120 prescription drugs sold worldwide come from constitute-derived sources, including i quarter of Western pharmaceuticals that are specifically derived from rainforest plants.

The U.S. National Cancer Constitute has identified 3,000 plants that are agile against cancer cells. Seventy per centum of these cancer-fighting plants are found in the rainforest.

Today, at that place are over 100 pharmaceutical companies and several government agencies researching plants from the rainforest for possible cures for AIDS, cancer, and other diseases.

Degradation of the rainforests

Tropical and temperate rainforests have been subjected to heavy logging and agricultural clearance throughout the twentieth century, and the area covered by rainforests around the world is rapidly shrinking. It is estimated that the rainforest was reduced by about 58,000 square kilometers annually in the 1990s, and may be decreasing by 1 and one-half acres of rainforest every 2d.

Such extensive loss of rainforest can exist tragic for both developing and developed nations alike. Humanity is losing potential medicines, food, products, climate and flood protection, and biodiversity. As much as 1 half of the world's plants, animals, and microorganisms may be lost if the trends of degradation to the rainforest continue unchecked in the next quarter of a century. Some biologists have estimated that big numbers of species are being driven to extinction, possibly as much as 50,000 a yr (or 137 species lost per day), due to the removal of habitat with destruction of the rainforests.

Protection and regeneration of the rainforests is a key goal of many environmental charities and organizations, including the Rainforest Brotherhood and the Nature Salvation.

Rainforest facts

Tropical and subtropical rainforests rarely go above 93° F or below 68° F.
Lxx percent of the plants in the rainforests are copse.
Many rainforest copse grow direct for 100 feet and then co-operative out. Over two,500 types of vines grow in the rainforests.
A 25-acre plot of rainforest in Borneo may incorporate more than 700 species of copse—a number equal to the total tree diversity of North America.
A single rainforest reserve in Republic of peru is home to more species of birds than are found in the entire United states of america.
One single tree in Republic of peru was found to harbor 43 different species of ants—a total that approximates the entire number of ant species in the British Isles.
The number of species of fish in the Amazon exceeds the number found in the entire Atlantic Ocean.
At least 80 percent of the developed earth's diet originated in the tropical rainforest. Its bountiful gifts to the world include fruits similar avocados, coconuts, figs, oranges, lemons, grapefruit, bananas, guavas, pineapples, mangos, and tomatoes; vegetables including corn, potatoes, rice, wintertime squash and yams; spices like blackness pepper, cayenne, chocolate, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, sugar pikestaff, tumeric, java, vanilla, and nuts, including Brazil nuts and cashews.
At least three,000 fruits are found in the rainforests; of these only 200 are at present in utilize in the Western world. The Indians of the rainforest use over 2,000.

Bibliography

Richards, P. W. 1996. The Tropical Rain Forest, second ed. Cambridge Academy Press. ISBN 0521421942
Whitmore, T. C. 1998. An Introduction to Tropical Pelting Forests, 2nd ed. Oxford Academy Press. ISBN 0198501471

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Where Can You Find a Rainforest in the United States

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