The tropical rainforests

Nedanstående innehåll är skapat av Mimers Brunns besökare. Kommentera arbete

Abstract



The tropical forests are the pride of the Earth. It constitutes a vivid part of cultures around the world, but most of it is yet in danger. So far we’ve already lost half of the worlds tropical rainforests and during the 1980’s the lumbering has been doubled. Try to imagine the dark-green band along the Equator in our atlas, which symbolises the most living vegetation on Earth. Maybe we have to change that colour into dark-brown that shows something that forever has been obliterated. With the help of the tropical rainforests the nature has covered the surface of the planet in a wonderful way. On 50 hectares we can find more tree-species than in North America. One single bush might have more kinds of ants than we have in Scandinavia. Due to an investigation the results shows that it’s possible that every tree might contain over 30 000 000 bugs. Even though the rainforest only covers 6% of the total area on Earth it contains about 70-90% of all animals and plants in the entire world. But if it continues as it does right now dozens of species dies out every day. Within a few decades all tropical rainforest has disappeared and then we never can get it back!!!!!!



Background



For me the tropical rainforests are rather interesting. As it’s on the news many times throughout the years I find it relevant and in need of protection. But the most interesting part is about all the animals and plants living there as they are the ones that get hurts by the devastatment of the forests. The devestament of the tropical forests, for me is equal to taking a persons original life. I also want to give other people information that there is such a huge life-cycle in such a small region of the world.



Questions I want to have the answers to



- How big importance has the tropical rainforests on the world and why shouldn’t we destroy them?

- How about the living creatures in the forests?



What is a rainforest?



Rainforest is a forest that constantly grows in wet conditions.

Rainforests can be found wherever where the precipitation is more than 2000 mm and even distributed over the year. You can find rainforests in both tropical and temperate zones but the most known is the area around the Equator. The highest tree found in the rainforest was a deciduous tree at 83 metres.





History



The rainforests of the Earth is 30-60 million years old. The aborigines have lived in the Amazonas for at least 15 000 years. During this period they have learned to live side by side with the nature. There are two different explanations of why the Amazonas got its name:

1. Once a year a way of fountain-water flows 5-10 metres up in the sky and then the water of the Atlantic Ocean flows some 15 kilometres up.

2. Longhaired warriors attacked the Spanish discoverer of the Amazon-river. He thought that it was female tribes that were called Amazones.

1898 the name “rainforest” came from a German botanist called Schimper, to describe forests that constantly grows in wet conditions.





Spreading



There are three regions of rainforests. The biggest one is the one in South- and Centralamerica. It covers an area from the pelvis of the Amazon River up to the Caribbean islands and along the slope of the Andes East Side in the south. There’s also rainforests on the west slope of the Andes in Ecuador, Colombia and in the Atlantic side of the Centralamerican isthmus. Approximate 57% of the total rainforests are located within the American continent.

The second largest rainforest area is the Indo-Malaya one. It’s located in Southeast Asia and consists of Indonesia, the Malacca-peninsula and New Guinea. Rainforests and monsoonforests covers parts of Thailand, Myanmar, Indo-Chine, the Philippines and some small areas of Australia, India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. This part consists of approximate 25% of the total rainforests of the world.

The remaining 18% are located in Africa. The forest grows in the Congo-pelvis and the lower parts of western Africa. There’s also rainforests on Madagascar, the Seychelles and on Mauritius.

These three parts makes different biogeographic areas with different species. The edification and the appearance are though equal in the different parts.

Types of forests



Tropical rainforest, or tropical fruit forest, is a common name for many different kinds of forests. Some kinds of forests are:

Mangrove-forests: It grows in the mouth of rivers and strand-areas. Periodically the sea floods it. This kind of forest is an important place for broods, for example fish-, shrimp- and other kinds of crustaceans’ animals. It’s also important for the coastal fishes too.

Swampy forests: There are two kinds of swampy forests. The first one is the one that periodically is flooded by the sea and the second one is the one in low-landed areas with a very small amount of awayflown water. This kind of forest is the major part of the Amazonas.

Tropical lowland-forests: This is the kind of rainforest that’s mostly mentioned as a rainforest. It grows approximate up to 600 metres above the sea. This kind is the one that contains mostly species and unfortunately also the one that’s most threatened.

Tropical mountainous rainforests: this one continues to grow where the tropical lowland-forests end. Here, the epiphytes increase.

Cloud forests: This forest grows at the height of 1 500 metres above the sea. The trees here are way higher than anywhere else is. The trees are covered with epiphytes. The dampness of the air is very high and the ground is covered with moss.





The trees



The majority of the trees in the rainforest have the height of 30 metres and a circumference of one metre. But her is some exception with trees as high as 60 metres and with the circumference of 17 metres. Some trees are that high those even termites can’t get through them, and some trees are very hard to put a nail through. The roots are created so that the tree won’t fall. Some trees are green throughout the whole year. The leaves are often oval, unsplittered, thick and feels like leather. A tree that grows in the rainforest grows all the time and very seldom it has its famous rings that show the ages of the trees. A tree can become 150-1400 years old but it takes 30-60 years for them to ripen and to give flowers.



Why do we need the rainforest?



As long as we can remember, the human kind has been able to chop trees and transform forests into agricultural land-areas and other useful things. Huge parts of Europe was covered with forests approximate 1 000 years ago. The transformation of these forests contributed to the social, economical and technological development that followed. Now the tropical countries develop in a very fast way. The principal point of this is that the Man needs the tropical rainforests around the world. On our planet the tropical rainforests efforts a home for millions of tribes that has adapted their life for the forest. The forests furnish them with protection, animals, plants and not least food. The people not living there is as dependent of the forest as they that lives there. Even though the forest makes 6% of the total area of the planet Earth about 70-90% of all living species on Earth lives there. It’s necessary to keep the genetic resources that have collected in the forests.





It’s the animals rainforest and not ours!



Karen from Denmark has lived in a rainforest for more than 35 years now. She never wears shoes, as there isn’t something to be afraid of, and especially not snakes. She only needs to hold a fruit in her hand, and then monkeys come up to her. She says that zoos aren’t the place for animals to be. If the children would get the opportunity to see the animals in the nature they’d get more impressed. When she feels a bit sad she eats some leaves that she knows the monkeys eat and then she’s in a good mood again. She knows exactly what leaves they eat and she knows that she isn’t in a danger in that case.

She moved there with her husband from Sweden and they were probably the first settlers that really engaged them selves to keep the rainforests in Costa Rica. Karen expresses herself in this way:

“ It’s horrible that the rainforests will be chopped down ‘cause we need bananas, meat, coffee-beans, sugar and pineapple when the jungle itself contains many proteins and medicines. And also the animals don’t belong to us.

Karen and Olle have lived in the jungle for more than 35 years now but they don’t have any children. They have pets instead: nose-bears, monkeys, lizards and squirrels. In 1963 they managed to get the first reservation in the entire Centralamerica. Her husband is very interested in tapirs but there were no in the jungle they moved to, with the size of about 88 hectares. Olle went to the Osa-peninsula to find some but he never returned. Karen went there to find him but the only thing she found were parts of his dead body and she got to know that he had been murdered. The Osa-peninsula became a national park as a remembrance of Olle Wessberg. Today, Costa Rica is the nation with most national parks in the entire world.

The biggest genetic library in the world



The life in the rainforest is amazing. Biologically, Latinamerica is the richest region. For example Colombia has 25 000 species which is the same as the whole Southeast Asia. The United States has 17 000 species of plants and Sweden has 2 000. That’s a huge difference. The areas that’s most divided are those whom survived the last polar time. During that period much was changed into savannah.

The rainforest is a simmering reciprocal action of species that together makes the ecological system. Some scientists think that 50 species every day obliterates due to the devastatement. The tropical rainforests is a treasure with more than 50% of the genetic material of the world and the meaning of keeping this is not enough to talk about. Right now less than 1% of the tropical rainforests been under chemical investigation. This might sound strange due to their useful medicinal qualities. In average one third of all things bought at the drug store is taken from the species of the rainforest.





The rainforest – a treasure



Among all the good we use every day hundreds of them has the origin in the rainforests. Rubber, wood, tea, cacao, vanilla, pine-apple, passionfruit, bananas, caraway, pepper, dates, nail-varnish, golf-balls, p-pills… the list can go on for ever. Some of our animals are descended from the rainforests: hens, for example, are originally from the rainforests in Asia. The tropical rainforest seems to be the best resource to some remedies against cancer. Actually majority of the drugs are from the rainforests. If we just could keep and explore all those species that there is, the world will be able to look into a brighter future, with new medicines, better food and new raw-materials for the industry.





Life is about the life of the forest



It’s not only the animals that are threatened due to the disappearance of the forests. Also the aborigines are throated. The aboriginals have had the rainforest as a home for thousands of years and if that disappears their life also disappears. Most of the tribes living there have been exterminated and their language has been forgotten. It’s not only the aborigines that are disappearing. It’s a lot of other tribes too. Some tribes only contain of about 18-20 persons. Such a small tribe hardly can survive culturally or linguistic. These tribes fight for their survival. Their life is in the hands of the rainforests. And the rainforest is in the hands of the Man.

Help against diseases and others



The p-pill, which is the safest contraceptive, was usually made by wild jams that grow in the forests of Mexico. The latest pill has arrived to the world market thanks to a plant from the forests of West Africa.

Help against cancer is also found in the rainforests. Here you also can find cure against leukaemia and Hodgkin’s disease. Due to National Cancer Institute in the USA there might be at least 10 more plants that can cure cancer. There’s also a hope that we someday will find the cure against HIV and AIDS in some of the plants growing in the forests.





Cocaine



The Peruvian government during the 1960’s started a colonisation-project in the upper part of the Huallaga-valley. 30 million dollars was given for agriculture-credits. Many new settlers immigrated from the poor highland areas. During the 1970’s the settlers were abandoned and the credits was not handed out anymore. The settlers were recommended to move to the cocaine-cultivation, which was the one that made most money.

The latest 20 years the cultivation of cocaine in Peru has increased very fast. In 1974 the total area which was used to cultivate cocaine was 2 000 hectares and in 1980 it had increased to 67 000 hectares. In 1987 the area was as high as 120 000-130 000 hectares and only one year later it was 250 000 hectares. Probably the cocaine-cultivation has destroyed over 700 000 hectares of forests in Peru. Besides that the cocaine has created huge damages by narcomatics it also damages the environment due to that they use a lot of chemicals to prevent bugs. The farmers almost work for free and the cocaine has become the biggest export-goods in Peru. Every year the cocaine brings 1 billion each to Peru, Bolivia and Colombia.



A timed bomb



Almost half of the tropical forests in the world has been destroyed. Even though we know what huge use we could have from it against diseases an area of 6 soccer-plans is devastated every second. Within some decades over 75% of the total area has disappeared.



The climate of the Earth changes



The rainforests levels the climate on the Earth. The bind the dampness but also the soil. Today the rainforests are chopped down everywhere and the devestatment is enormous. Every minute rainforests with the size of six soccer-plans are devestated. Then what happens? Well, there’ll be flooding, drought and the thin soil will be blown or flushed away. Due to all the soil and mud the fishes will die. The coral reefs along the coasts will also die as the mud and soil covers it. And if the coral reefs dies out the fishes will also die. And this is very important for the Man, as it’s eaten by millions of people every day. When the rainforests are burned down the green-house-effect increases and the temperature will rise. Scientists think that the devestatement of the rainforests changes the climate on Earth.



The rainforest – not the lungs of the world



Many people call the rainforests for the lungs of the world. They say that if we cut down the forests the oxygen will end and the all creatures will stop breathing and die out. But luckily it’s totally wrong! Scientists say that all oxygen created by the rainforests goes back to the rainforests and are re-used. It uses everything that it produces for their own sake. It’s the plankton in the seas that produces much oxygen, but we aren’t dependent on that either. It’s a huge surplus in the atmosphere we’re breathing. Even if the rainforests and the plankton would disappear it would be enough oxygen for us to breathe for thousands of year ahead.





Nourishment for the forest



When the early European colonial powers send out explorers all over the world and saw the huge vegetation in the rain forests the got eager and chopped off trees and said that here you should start cultivate. But after a while they noticed that it didn’t go off very good, and this was the situation all over the rainforests. The most common explanation was that there was a lack of different minerals that made the plants grow. Such minerals as nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium and magnesium were missed in the soil. `Cause within the rainforest it’s the tree that keeps the nourishment and not the soil. They also get nourishment from leaves that have fallen down on the ground and other dust from the wood. One typical rainforest of this explanation is the one in the Amazonas. For example you can’t find snails here as here’s a lack of calcium so they aren’t able to build their shells. The trees that grow on volcanic soil lives a luxurious life compared with other trees.

Settlers



Probably the major problem in the Amazonas is the mass-immigration of poor workers. The population gets to the Amazonas with the hope of being able to cultivate crops to be sold on the local market but also to the international makets. Due to the high population the rivers gets polluted by the out-flows. The settlers that cultivates every land-area 2-3 times have to burn down new areas and the destruction of the forest goes on.





Reservations



Sure it would be great to put up reservations to keep the man away for destruction. But it isn’t good for the rainforests. The reason is that all the plants in the rainforest aren’t growing everywhere and if there’ll be a reservation they can’t spread. Some parts are adjacent and some plants don’t grow there that’s needful. Due to this some parts of the Amazonas have more species then others. Another reason is that the scientists thinks that the rainforest was forced away by the Ice age and that was 10 000-20 000 years ago. In the parts that weren’t touched by the ice the evolution has had “free hands” to work with places that were adjacent. Probably these places are/were at the Atlantic coast and at the Andes.





Forestry



The inquiry of goods made by wood and paper pulp is increasing all the time. Between the years 1974 and 1980 the consumtion of trees increased with 135% and it went to fuel, building-material and paper pulp. The inquire of tropical hard woods has the latest decades increased drasticly. Japan is the biggest importer of the tropical rainforest and it’s majorly from the south eastern part of Asia the wood comes from. As Japan buys such high ammounts and that the aboriginal needs material from the rainforest the pressure on the forests is increasing. It was majorly from the huge acess to the Amazonas up to 1980 the contribution on the market came from. The acess of timber in the Amazonas is valued up to 1 billion dollars. Even if the big forest-companies in the Amazonas has lumbered big areas of rainforest the major problem is the roads that’s been buildt to be able to transport the timber faster. These roads also stays as an entrance to all the setllers.









What will happen to the animals of Mexico?



Approximate 90% of the rainforests in Mexico are gone due to devastatement. Only in the last 30 years 70% of it has disappeared. The last part remaining is the Laccandon-jungle. In this jungle there’s 250 different kinds of mammals, 640 kinds of birds and 100 reptile-species. If the devastatement goes on as it does today this forest will be gone within 10 years of time. This comment comes from Dr Jeffery Wilkerson who has studied this forest for 26 years. 25% of the remaining forest is now a reservation and its called Montes Azules Reservación. The remaining 75% have been shared to farmers and settlers. Probably the Montes Azules Reservación will also been given away to farmers within a near future. The Mexican government allows people to move into the reservation, is it a reservation then?





Jungleguard



José Vidal is a 73 years old man who is famous for two things. He’s the biggest hunter in the area and that he’s the first one to quit hunting. When the forest became saved he ended hunting. The rainforests where he used to hunt is called Helechales and it was saved from many children from Sweden. The children of Sweden collected 14 million crowns in something called “Operation junglegurad”.

José has a lot of histories to tell: The jaguar is the most skittished animal and it’s also the one that’s hardest to hunt. The puma is curious and not very scared. The puma also eats the same food as we do.

Today, the grandchildren of José are jungleguards and guard the jungle. The guards rides through the jungle to prevent hunters but the guards are always unarmed. The villagers dislike the jungleguards as they prevent them from hunt and get wood. This led to that one year the villages sat fire on the forest and it took over 20 days to put the fire out.



Omar Castillo, an 8 years old jungle-saver



In 1985 the life of Omar Castillo changed rapidly. He lived a normal life together with his parents in the north part of Mexico City. His family was very poor, but his dream was that one day he would get to the rainforest. He knew that there was a jungle in Mexico and that was the place for him to get to when he got older. One night, he was alone home, he was watching the TV. It was a show about the jungle in Mexico where they chopped down trees and some parts even was on fire. Omar saw animals run away struck by panic. He went afraid and screamed:

“They are destroying my jungle!!!”



The day after he decided to save the jungle. The first thought that came across his mind was to buy the jungle but for what money? Of course, he should write to the president.

He wrote a letter and went to the palace and left the letter to the guards. He wrote 4 letters without getting any reply. His parents started to be fed up with his entire talk and the father told him to go there if it was this important.

But that he shouldn’t have said as it was exactly was what Omar did. He decided to go to the jungle even though it was over 1 400 kilometres away.



His father never had time to think about the environment, but now he listened to his son. He decided, together with his son, to walk all the way to the jungle and for all the money he could get he bought the equipment for the journey.



As they met grown-up people along the way Omar told them about the jungle and they started to believe that Omar was send from God himself. After some weeks the money was out and they had to return. But then Omar said cool that they had to beg the people they met for money. In the end of the journey people stood waiting for them along the w...