Time is Running Out for the World’s Tropical Rain Forests

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Rain forests are also potent climatic and environmental stabilizers. A fifth of the earth's fresh water cycles through the Amazonian filter and back to the Atlantic each year.
Rain forests are also potent climatic and environmental stabilizers. A fifth of the earth's fresh water cycles through the Amazonian filter and back to the Atlantic each year.
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Diagram of tropical rain forests of the world.
Diagram of tropical rain forests of the world.

Time is running out for the most valuable bioregion on the planet, our tropical rain forests.

The World’s Tropical Rain Forests

Imagine a place where it’s dusk at noon, where the temperature seldom varies from 80 degrees Fahrenheit and the humidity is always close to 100%. You stand on a spongy mat of decaying leaves that few plants penetrate. Massive roots lying on the ground gather to buttress tree trunks that vanish into a leafy canopy at least 30 feet above. As open as it is at ground level, the foliage layer overhead is so dense that less than 3% of the sunlight falling on the treetops 150 feet above filters to the forest floor. But for the occasional piercing calls of birds, there’s scant evidence of animal life. Little would you guess that this is home to half the species on our planet.

Misconceptions abound about what a rain forest is and what value it has. To people of temperate climates, the tropical rain forest is mysterious, alien. Hollywood images are threatening: thick, viper-and vermin-ridden undergrowth accessible only to sweating, machete-wielding persons of limited (and often diminishing) sanity. As a result, tropical rain forests too often is taken to mean jungle.

The Earth’s Greenbelt

  • Published on Jul 1, 1987
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