Name: ________________________________________________________
South America: The Amazon Rainforest
The Amazon Rainforest, which covers approximately 2.7 million square
miles, is the world’s largest tropical forest. Located mainly in Brazil, the
Amazon rainforest accounts for more than 20 percent of all the world’s
tropical forests. Known in Brazil as the selva, the rain forest is a vast store
house of biological diversity, filled with plants and animals both familiar
and exotic. According to estimates, at least half of all species are found in
tropical forests, but many of these species have not yet been identified.
Slow Moving: this three-toed sloth
spends most of its life in the treetops.
It is one of the many unusual species
of animals that make their homes in
the forests of the Amazon Basin.
The Amazon rainforest has also been described as “the lungs of the planet” because by
recycling carbon dioxide into oxygen, it produces over 20% of the world’s oxygen supply.
Tropical forests contain many valuable resources including cacao, nuts, spices, rare hardwoods, and
plant extracts used to make medicines. Some drugs used in treating cancer and heart disease come from
plants found only in tropical forests.
But human intervention – logging, mining, and clearing land for crops and grazing – has put tropical
forests at great risks. In Brazil, roads cut into the rain forest have opened the way for settlers, who clear
away the forts only to discover soil too poor in nutrients to sustain agriculture for more than a few
years. Land usually is cleared by a method called slash-and-burn, which contributes to global warming
by releasing great amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
In January 2001, the Brazilian government announced a program that seeks to convert roughly
one-third of the current Amazon rainforest into highways, hydroelectric dams, power stations,
and other utilities. Environmental activists in Brazil have fought against this program in order to
preserve the rainforest and prevent negative effects such as pollution.
One of the greatest threats to the Amazon Rainforest comes from the local inhabitants. The
large demand for cheap supplies of rare wood and plywood both locally and abroad sustains a
large logging industry, which provides many jobs. Of this industry, an estimated 60% to 80% of
logging activity occurs illegally. The high price offered for rare wood from companies abroad
fuels a large illegal industry, with importing nations rarely questioning the legality of the
imported wood, which is used to make consumer goods such as paper and furniture.
The slow deforestation of the Amazon presents a significant problem for the 20 million people
and the thousands of animal and plant species living in the forest. Some estimate that 50,000
different species of plants and animals are lost every year.
Name: ________________________________________________________
CAUSES OF DEFORESTATION
Fires, mining,
urbanization, road
construction,
dams
Logging (legal and Commerical
illegal)
Agriculture
Other
Subsistence
Agriculture
Cattle Ranches
Deforestation
PROS
CONS
Name: ________________________________________________________
Based on this information, describe the physical geography and human geography found in the
Amazon rainforest. Explain how humans are impacted by the topography of the Amazon
Rainforest.
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