Things We Learned about the Rainforest
- Rainforest's need high temperatures (70-80F
degrees) year around and lots of rain
- Most of the world's rainforest's are along
the equator
- Rainforests have a vast mix of plant life--500
different species in one acre--this is called "biodiversity"
- There are 3 levels to a rainforest--
- The Canopy is where trees 75-150
feet tall grow and absorb most of the light (emergent trees poke out of
the canopy)
- The Understory is the where small
trees, vines, palms, scrubs and ferns grow that like the dark, humid environment
- The Forest Floor is were herbs,
moss and fungi grow
- Buttressed roots help support the base
of trees in the rainforest because the trees don't have deep roots--nutrients
are all on the surface
- Lianas vines that climb to get to areas
with more sunlight
- Bromeliads are a kind of plant with leaves
that grow from the base of the plant to form a water holding tank. Frogs
carry their tadpoles up the canapy to grow in these plants!
- Epiphyte "air plant" grows on
branch or trunk or another plant without harming the host plant (ex. orchids)
- Parasites live off host plants (ex. mushrooms)
- Saprophytes live off dead organic matter
on the forest floor
- Animals survive in different layers of
the rainforest
- Insect live in the rainforest include many
butterflies (Morphos are beautiful blue butterflies), mosquitoes (carry
malaria and yellow fever), termites (breakdown wood into soil) and cutter
and bullet ants (live in large communities and each ant has a specific job
in the colony)
- The rainforest is important to the world.
Many common foods first came from the rainforest (corn, rice, oranges, chocolate)
- Many drugs to treat cancer and heart disease
come from the rainforest
- Other resources from the rainforest are
waxes, spices, dyes, fuel
- The rainforest helps protect the earth's
climate (burning the forest--called "deforestation"--warms up
the planet by releasing CO2. This causes a greenhouse effect leading to
global warming, melting of the ice caps, rising of sea levels and eventually
flooding in costal cities around the world.
- Children from around the world have helped
raise money to purchase arces of land in Costa Rica to help "save the
rainforest." As of 1994, 42,000 acres have been protected in Bosque
Eterno de los Ninos also called the "The Children's Rain Forest."
Donations can be sent c/o Monteverde Conservation League, Apartado 10581-1000,
SanJose, Costa Rica, Central America
- Ecotourism is helping conserve the world's
natural resources by helping the local people make more money from tourism
then they could make by "harvesting" (lumber, meat, pet trade)
the land. This has helped Costa Rica make 25% of its land protected rainforests.
