The Geography Expert - Rainforest Characteristics

Hello, I am the geography expert, and will be answering all questions related to the geography side of things. I will be looking at the different Rainforests and their characteristics, and where they are located. Though Rainforests only cover roughly 6% of the world, they are home to over half of the worlds plants and animals. For this reason, we can not afford to lose them at the rate we are doing now.

What makes a Rainforest a tropical Rainforest, as opposed to a temperate Rainforest?

If a Rainforest is close to the equator, it means it is tropical. Temperate ones are generally closer to costal or pacific areas. Another way to tell is a tropical Rainforest does, as the name may suggest, lie in the tropics.

Rainforests and their characteristics...


The Amazon
Is the biggest tropical rainforest in the world. It is in South America, 60% of it covering Brazil and the rest of it covering other South American countries such as Peru, Columbia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Guyana and Suriname.

Central American Rainforest
Once upon a time, this area was once completely covered in Rainforest, but a lot of it has since been cleared for farming purposes, such as cattle ranching and growing sugar cane. I think this is a good example of how rainforest animals, wildlife, and natives (a lot of humans do live in rainforests) are dying because of human interference. This region is particularly famous due to the large number of tropical birds and parrots that live there.


African Rainforest
Again, African rainforests are dying out. This is mainly due to Road Construction, Farming, and Deforestation.


Southern Asian Rainforest
The Southern Asian Rainforests range from India to Burma in the west, and then to Malaysia and the islands of Java and Borneo in the east. Mangrove means a tree or shrub that grows in tropical conditions. Bangladesh, in Southern Asia, has the largest area of mangrove forests in the world.
In Southeast Asia, the entire year is faced with a hot, humid climate. A Subtropical area is a region adjacent to or bordering on the tropics. In the mainland Asia it has a subtropical climate with never ending monsoon rains followed by a dry periods.

Australasian Rainforest
Australia, New Zealand and the island of New Guinea were, millions of years ago, their own southern continent, called Gondwana (Gondwanaland). This means that they were seperate from the rest of the world, so today, even after they have separated, these countries still contain many different species of animal that can’t be found anywhere else.

P.S - Annoyingly, though I managed to find a wide variety of pictures and maps for you that would better illustrate what I am trying to say here, I was unable to, despite my best efforts, post the pictures beneath the words. And as I am a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to these things, I decided it would be better to have no pictures at all than a clump of disorganized, not captioned, and disconnected pictures. If you think you know how to get the pictures below the words, please let me know.