Tropical Rainforest
Nisha Kalathara
Danielle Sturdivent
Global Distribution
• Four Realms
– The Afrotropical Rainforest Realm
• Congo (Zaire) River Basin
– The Australian Rainforest Realm
– The Indomalayan Rainforest Realm
– The Neotropical Rainforest Realm
• Amazon River Basin
Climate
• Warm annual mean temperature
• The average climate of a tropical rainforest is high
humidity due heavy rainfall
• The average rainfall is 150 cm per year.
• It rains about 1/8 of an inch per day and more than 90
days a year.
• This biome is found near the equator, which means
that there is more direct sunlight.
• The average temperature of a rain forest is about 77°
Fahrenheit and never drops below 64° Fahrenheit.
Regional Variations
• The Amazon
– 1/5 of world’s plants and birds
– 1/10 of world’s mammal species
• Africa
– high cloud forest
– mangrove swamps
– flooded forests
• Southern Asia
– hot and humid all year round
• Australia
– Isolated
– Undergrowth in Australia's tropical forests is dense and lush
Resources
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Woods
Fibers
Gums & Resins
Oils
Medicines
Many foods ( Avacado, Breadfruit, Cane
Sugar, Mayonaisse, and Passion fruit)
Changes throughout geologic time
• The tropical seasonal rainforest in southern
Yunnan conspicuously decreased from a cover
of 10.9% of the total area of the region in
1976 down to 3.6% in 2003, mainly due to
rubber planting
• The large island of Madagascar was once
intensively forested, but now much of it is
gone.
Adaptations
• Plants
– Dominated by broadleaf evergreen plants
– Dense canopy formed by tree tops block light from reaching
forest floor
– Plants on the ground level have large leaves to capture what
little sunlight filters through
• Animals
– The single largest group of animals are made of insects.
– Some of the insects that can be found are brightly colored
butterflies, mosquitoes, camouflaged stick insects, and huge
colonies of ants.
– There is incredible biodiversity and there may be 40 to 100
different species in 2.5 acres ( 1 hectare) of a tropical rain forest.
Environmental Problems
• Farmers use most of the tropical rainforest for
agricultural production.
• Damming of the tropical rivers has
traditionally caused about ten percent of the
total annual deforestation in the tropics.
• Deforestation and other factors like the search
for minerals and oil are forcing them into a
steadily decreasing area.
Bibliography
• http://rainforests.mongabay.com/0101.htm
• http://www.blueplanetbiomes.org/rainforest.htm
• http://forestry.about.com/cs/rainforest/p/rforest_real
ms.htm
• http://jrscience.wcp.muohio.edu/FieldCourses00/Trop
EcoCostaRicaArticles/Tropicalrainforest.html
• http://nhs.needham.k12.ma.us/cur/bio96_97/P3/Tropi
calRF/cgdb3.html
• http://www.folklife.si.edu/resources/maroon/foodway
s/more.htm