Rainforest Impacts

Rain forests are are forest with a very high amount of rainfall usually about 250 and 450 cm of per year. There are 2 types of rain forests tropical and temperate. Tropical rain forests have a warm and humid climate with no dry season. Temperate rain forests only occur in a few regions around the world and they are cool and wet. there are also many layers in a rain forest. There is the emergent, canopy, under story and forest floor. The emergent layer only contains a small amount of really tall trees. some trees can grow up to 70 - 80 meters tall. They also need to be able to withstand hot temperatures and strong winds. The canopy contains the majority of the largest trees which are typically 30 - 45 meters tall. The canopy estimates to hold about 50% of all plant species. The under story layer is between the canopy and the forest floor. The leaves of the under story are much larger and there are a lot more insects. Many of the seedlings that will grow to the canopy are currently in the under story. The forest floor is the bottom layer and it only receives 2% of the sunlight. Plants also had to adapt to low light conditions. There are also decaying plant and animal matter which quickly goes away from the warm humid conditions that are perfect for fungi to grow.

Tropical and temperate rain forests have been exposed to logging and heavy agricultural clearance from the 20th century and the area of the world covered by rain forest is shrinking. 7.3 million hectares of rain forest are lost each year. Possibly 50,000 species of animals are driven to extinction each year. There were around 6 million square miles of rain forest in the beginning, but now because of deforestation, there are really only less than half of that still found in the world. According to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization,  The main reasons for this are logging, cattle ranching, mining industrial building, floods and dam building.  Every second there is part of the rain forest that is cut down. In fact, you probably lose over 80,000 football fields worth of rain forest each and every day. Almost 90% of west Africa's rain forest has been destroyed. Since the arrival of humans Madagascar has lost 2 thirds of its original rain forest. at present rates all of Indonesian rain forest would be gone in 10 years and 13 to 16 for Papua New Guinea.