Write a description of the Amazon rain forest: Definition of “rain forest”:, Characteristics of the Amazon rain forest, and explain the location and size of the Amazon rain forest. Use one piece of evidence from the text above.
What Is a Rain Forest?
By definition, a rainforest receives at least six and a half feet of rainfall in a year. Within that broad designation, rainforests are found on every continent except Antarctica. They can be broken down into two basic types: temperate and tropical. As you might guess, temperate rainforests are not as hot as tropical rainforests—they can thrive as far north as Alaska and as far south as New Zealand—but they meet all the other criteria. Rain forests are composed of vertical layers. The canopy is where the tops of the mature trees form a thick cover that blocks more than 90 percent of the sunlight from the layers below. At a height of up to 200 feet, the canopy is home to a wide variety of plants and animals that are found nowhere else. Because this ecological zone is so difficult to reach, scientists have only recently begun exploring its diversity.
Below the canopy lies the understory layer, composed of young trees and plants that can survive with meager sunlight. Much closer to the ground, the understory is the hunting domain for many predatory animal species that live at ground level. The forest floor receives a mere 2 percent of the sunlight striking the canopy. Few plants can thrive in these conditions, so the floor is quite open. Most people picture a rainforest as an impenetrable thicket of vines and plants, but that only happens in places where the forest canopy is broken. Where sunlight penetrates—along streambeds or where lightning, wind, or logging has removed the mature trees—new growth runs riot. This creates the densely overgrown areas that we call jungle.
Now let's look at what makes the Amazon rainforest so special. It is the world's single largest rainforest, with an area of roughly 3.5 million square miles—more than half as large as the United States. To put it another way, the Amazon Basin contains about half of all the remaining rainforests on the planet.
This warm, wet habitat harbors more biodiversity than any other place on Earth. The figures are astounding: more than 30 million species of insects, 500 different mammals, and almost that many reptiles, and one-fifth of all the world's bird species make their home there. Some live in the canopy layer and never touch the ground during their entire lives. The river itself also supports an abundance of animal life, including freshwater dolphins, manatees, electric eels, flesh-eating piranha, and an eight-foot-long fish with lungs instead of gills called the pirarucu (sometimes spelled pirarucu).
Paragraph 1: Write a description of the Amazon rain forest: Definition of “rain forest”:, Characteristics of the Amazon rain forest, and explain the location and size of the Amazon rain forest. Use one piece of evidence from the text above.
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