Tropical Rainforest

Tropical Rainforest

 The tropical rainforest is a hot, moist biome found near Earth's equator. The world's largest tropical rainforests are in South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Tropical rainforests receive from 60 to 160 inches of precipitation that is fairly evenly distributed throughout the year. The combination of constant warmth and abundant moisture makes the tropical rainforest a suitable environment for many plants and animals. 

Ideal Environment 

Tropical rainforests contain the greatest biodiversity in the world. Over 15 million species of plants and animals live within this biome.
The hot and humid conditions make tropical rainforests an ideal environment for bacteria and other microorganisms. Because these organisms remain active throughout the year, they quickly decompose matter on the forest floor. 

Nutrients 

In other biomes, such as the deciduous forest, the decomposition of leaf litter adds nutrients to the soil. But in the tropical rainforest, plants grow so fast that they rapidly consume the nutrients from the decomposed leaf litter. As a result, most of the nutrients are contained in the trees and other plants rather than in the soil. Most nutrients that are absorbed into the soil are leached out by the abundant rainfall, which leaves the soil infertile and acidic.

HOW CAN WE SAVE RAINFORESTS?  

Rainforests are disappearing very quickly. The good news is there are a lot of people who want to save rainforests. The bad news is that saving rainforests is not going to be easy. It will take the efforts of many people working together in order to ensure that rainforests and their wildlife will survive for your children to appreciate, enjoy, and benefit from.

Some steps for saving rainforests and, on a broader scale, ecosystems around the world can be abbreviated as TREES:

• Teach others about the importance of the environment and how they can help save rainforests.  
• Restore damaged ecosystems by planting trees on land where forests have been cut down.
• Encourage people to live in a way that doesn't hurt the environment
• Establish parks to protect rainforests and wildlife
• Support companies that operate in ways that minimize damage to the environment