Ecosystem Paper
Amazon Rain Forest
The Amazon River Basin is the largest and most famous rainforest. It covers nearly the entire Amazon river. This rain forest covers at least 1.7 billion acres and this is made up of pure dense rainforest. Here’s an example of how big this rain forest is nine countries are most of their land covered by the rainforest. The Amazon rainforest is the oldest and is about 55 million years old. During this time the Atlantic Ocean had widened enough to provide a warm, moist climate to the Amazon and it turns out these are just the right conditions for a tropical rainforest.
The Amazon rainforest suffers from deforestation because of human population coming in using machines to make clearings for cattle grazing, forest clearing for soy farms, timber plantations, urban expansion, dams, mining and agriculture fires. Deforestation is not the only reason the Amazon is changing. Global climate is also a problem due to higher temperatures in the tropical Atlantic reduced rainfall in the Amazon causes a drought which bring an increase to fires. If this climate change continues the rainforest will transition to savanna.
The structure of the rainforest has four layers:
Top layer is called the canopy consists of the tallest trees of the rain forest. The top of the trees gets the most sunlight.
Subcanopy layer is right below the canopy and where 70% of rainforest animals and plants live.
Understory is where young trees and plants like ferns and palms that do not need much sunlight to live. (1 to 2%)
The floor has a thin layer of leaves, seeds or fruits and branches that fall from trees.
The biotic factors of the Amazon rainforest are boa, constrictor, toucan, Bengal tiger, orangutans, poison dart frog and plants. Here are examples of plants that live in the Amazon rainforest, Epiphytes are plants that live on the floor and these plants live off of other plants. Saprophytes are the rainforest decomposers, Algae...