I remember studying in depth tropical rainforests for my GCSE’s. It was definitely an area that captured my interest more than others. However, just like everything I have studied feel I would not be able to talk about these in great depth without some revising first.
I am particularly excited to write a few posts on this area as I had the privilege of visiting the Amazon rainforest earlier this year and feel I can strongly relate to it.
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| Rainforest locations |
Tropical rainforests are located in the tropics where the climate is hot and wet all year. They currently cover 6% of the Earth’s which has significantly decreased over the past 200 years where they used to cover twice as much.
Tropical rainforests are considered the most ecologically bio-diverse ecosystems on the planet:
- They are home to 50% of all life-forms on the planet
- They produce 40% of the worlds oxygen
- The vegetation is dense with trees growing up to 50m in height.
The climate
Tropical rainforests do not tend to have distinct seasons, if any seasons at all. The day to day climate is usually the same all year round. The weather tends to be either hot and dry or hot and wet with occasional thunder storms. The average daily temperature is around 28°C which can reach 35°C and will never fall below 20°C and on average will receive around 2000mm of rain per year, creating a ‘sticky atmosphere’. I can agree that the rainforest was all of these... hot, muggy, humid, damp... Not the easiest conditions to live in to say the least!
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| Soil and nutrient cycle |
The rainforest can be quite deceptive with its dense vegetation and range of exotic wildlife. It may be a lush paradise but in reality they have fragile ecosystems with poor soils. There tends to only be a thin layer of fertile soil on the grounds surface with the deeper soils being ‘iron-rich laterites’ which are not good for vegetation growth. The majority (80%) of the nutrients available in the forest actually come from the vegetation itself, when plant matter falls to the ground and decomposes rather quickly due to the hot wet climate. This allows the nutrients to be recycled back into the forest (see diagram).
Students may find the diagram useful to sketch to help remember the cycle.
Links:
you are a poop website unless you are what's inside ! :)
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