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Rainforest Basic Informations: Rainforests provide a critical habitat for many of the Earth´s plant and animal species. They cover less than two percent of the globe. But they provide a home for more than fifty percent of all living things (more than five million species of plants, animals and insects), fifty million indigenous people live there. Rainforests play an important role in sustaining life outside of them selves: - 25 percent of all modern drugs originally came from rainforests - over two thousand tropical plants have been identified as having anti-cancer properties - many foods of today owe their origin to the rainforests(rice, millet(Hirse), bananas, pineapples(Ananas)) - they provide an ongoing source of genetic material(is crucial to the sustained productivity of many modern crops) They perform many "natural services" like large amounts of water or as helping to regulate the global climate by absorbing and storing vast quantities of carbon (Kohlenstoff). Rainforests also help to moderate atmospheric dioxide levels, which is an extremely important function since excess atmospheric carbon dioxide is the primary factor in human induced climate change. Rainforest Regions: Forests that receive more than seventy-eight inches of rain througout the year are rainforests.
There are as many as thirty or forty different types of rainforests including evergreen lowland forests, evergreen mountain forests, tropical evergreen alluvial forests and semi-deciduous forests. All can be classified as either tropical or temperate rainforests. Tropical rainforests are found in a large belt around the equator, where temperatures and rainfall are high year-round. They are located in Central and South America, Africa, Asia and Oceania. Temperate rainforests have high rainfall and occur in regions with more mild or moderate climates, usually in places where marine air meets coastal mountains. They are found in parts of Southern Australia, New Zeeland, Chile, the U.
S. Pacific Northwest, Canada, also in small patches of the Norwegian, British and Japanese coasts. Rainforest Destruction: Industrial society sees forests as free sources of valuable materials or as needless woods. They are cleared for "development", agriculture, cattle-grazing, logging companies for timber and pulp and by oil companies for drilling. More than thirty million acres per year are destroyed and one hundred species become extinct (sterben aus) every day. Many products from rainforests as oranges, coffee or pharmaceutical products will be lost.
The vital function of absorbing rain will get lost, so the results will be soil erosion, floods and droughts. Other sequences will be loosing of the absorption of carbon, changing if the climate, what includes rising seas, disruption of agriculture, species extinction and an increase in the frequency and severity of storms. Indigenous cultures and people will disappear.
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