Rainforest
From Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia written in simple English for easy reading.
A rainforest (or rain forest) is a tropical forest that gets a lot of rain. It usually has a lot of plants and animals. A very well known rainforest is the Amazon Rainforest. Most of it is in Brazil, though Equador, Colombia, Chile and other countries have parts of it.
Scientists say over half of all plant and animal species live in the rainforest. Also more than 1/4 of all medicines come from here. Covering only 2% of the Earth's land area they still provide 40% of the oxygen.
The rainforest can be found in three major geographical areas around the world.
- Central America in the Amazon River basin.
- Africa - Zaire basin, with a small area in West Africa; also eastern Madagascar.
- Indo-Malaysia - west coast of India, Assam, Southeast Asia, New Guinea, and Queensland, Australia.
The rainforest gets an average of 50 to 250 inches of rain a year. It is warm year round rarely getting above 93 F or getting below 68 F. It has an average humidity of 77 to 88% The rainforest has carpet of green rot leaves on the floor. This is called the humus layer.
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