Tropical Rain Forest

The tropical rain forest is a forest with tall trees in a region of year-round high temperatures where an average of 50 to 260 inches of rain falls yearly. This article briefly shares important facts on the Rainforests. 

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Rain forests belong to the tropical wet climate group. The temperature in a rain forest rarely gets higher than 34 °C or drops below 20 °C, average humidity is between 77 and 88%. Rainfall is often more than 100 inches a year. There is usually a brief season of less rain. Almost all rain forests lie near the equator.

Rainforests now cover less than 6% of Earth’s land surface. Scientists estimate that more than half of the world’s plant and animal species live in tropical rain forests and tropical rainforests produce 40% of Earth’s oxygen. A tropical rain forest has more kinds of trees than any other area in the world. Scientists have counted about 100 to 300 species. Seventy per cent of the plants in the rainforest are trees. About 1/4 of all the medicines we use come from the rainforest.

All tropical rain forests are similar. Many of the trees have straight trunks that don’t branch out. The majority of the trees have a smooth, thin bark because there is no need to protect them from water loss and freezing temperatures. It also makes it difficult for plant parasites to get a hold on the trunks. The bark of different species is so similar that it is difficult to identify a tree by its bark. Many trees can only be identified by their flowers

Each of the three largest rainforests–American, African, and Asian has a different group of animal and plant species. Each rain forest has many species of monkeys, all of which differ from the species of the other two rain forests. Also, different areas of the same rain forest have different species. Many kinds of trees that grow in the mountains of the Amazon rain forest do not grow in the lowlands.

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