These Reasons Explain Why the Amazon Rainforest Is Important
- An Abundance of Animals. From pond-hopping poison frogs to spotted jaguars slinking around in the dead of night, the Amazon rainforest is important because it houses some of the world’s ...
- A Wide Variety Of Plant Life. More than 40,000 plant species have been found in the Amazon rainforest. ...
- The Amazon River's Riches. ...
- The Carbon and Oxygen Cycle. ...
What are the good things about the Amazon rainforest?
What Equipment to Take to the Amazon Rainforest
- Waterproof Sandals. After a long day of hiking or trekking, the first thing you might want to do is give your feet some room and time for recovery.
- Trail Shoes. Hiking can be challenging and tiring, so you need to ensure your feet have the proper support. ...
- Hiking Boots. ...
- Pants. ...
- Sun hat. ...
- Shirts. ...
- Socks. ...
- Undergarments. ...
- Headband. ...
- Poncho. ...
What you can do to help the Amazon rainforest?
- Allergies
- Animal
- Animals
- Autoimmune Health
- Baking
- Budget-Friendly
- Burger
- Buzz
- Cheese
- Collections
How does the Amazon rain forest benefit us?
- Medical. ...
- Dental (Delta Dental of Washington)
- Vision (Vision Service Plan) Plan pays 100% for an eye exam at an in-network provider once every calendar year. ...
- Infertility Benefits. ...
- Amazon 401 (k) Plan. ...
- Employee Restricted Stock Units. ...
- Flexible Spending Accounts. ...
- Disability Insurance. ...
What makes the Amazon rainforest so important?
Why is the Amazon so important? The Amazon rainforest is important to the rest of the planet because it helps to regulate the world’s climate. The Amazon rainforest stores 90–140 billion metric tonnes of carbon, making it the world’s largest land carbon ‘sink’.
What are three benefits of the Amazon rainforest?
It's a fitting analogy, since the Amazon plays a major role in many of the processes that make our planet habitable: water cycles, weather patterns, and the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide. The rainforest is also home to more than 30 million people and over 10% of the world's biodiversity.
What does the rainforest provide for the world?
Rainforests are essential to life on Earth. Not only do they provide air, water, medicine, food, and shelter to a multitude of living beings, they are also one of our best natural defenses against climate change because of their capacity to absorb greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
What resources does the Amazon rainforest provide?
Amazonia has tremendous quantities of primary resources. Resources include traditional commodities such as minerals, hydropower, agriculture and ranching, timber, non-timber forest products, and tourism.
Why should we save the Amazon rainforest?
Though the Amazon rainforest covers less than 2% of the Earth's surface, it plays a vital role in stabilizing the global climate, with its more than 390 billion trees storing massive amounts of carbon dioxide — a greenhouse gas that's driving climate change.
Why is the Amazon rainforest important?
It has a huge role in controlling the world’s climate. It plays an important role in regulating the carbon cycles in the atmosphere as well as the world’s oxygen. The Amazon Rainforest house over an estimated 16,000 tree ...
What are some interesting facts about the Amazon rainforest?
Here are some facts about the Amazon Rainforest. The Amazon River is the second-longest river in the world. Its area of water ways covers nearly 4000 miles and is home to numerous natural species such as the endangered pink dolphin, red-bellied piranha. bull sharks, and black caiman crocodiles. The Amazon Basin has the highest rainfall rate in ...
What is the largest rainforest in the world?
The Amazon Rainforest is the largest in the world and has vital links between global warming and our survival. This rainforest covers more than two million miles of forest land and stretches across nine South American countries. A big portion of its area is found in the Brazil region. It is a beautiful place – full of lush green forests ...
What are the problems in the Amazon rainforest?
Poaching. Illegal hunting of animals and rare plant species is one of the major problems in the Amazon. Animals such as the giant Amazon turtle, the Amazon Manatee, and the Paiche, have been slowly vanishing from the wild. Rare plant species are also poached from the rainforest and are sold expensively in the black market.
How many trees are there in the Amazon rainforest?
The Amazon Rainforest house over an estimated 16,000 tree species and 390 billion individual trees. The Amazon influences rainfall patterns in the countries near it and even in the United States of America.
Why do wildfires happen in the Amazon?
Wildfires. Fires breaking every year in the Amazon rainforest are often caused by accidents during the dry months. Every year, the dry season causes wild fires that destroy wildlife. However, many satellite photographs also show that the fires in the Brazil region of the Amazon were set deliberately to clear many acres of land.
What did the Amazon tribes use to cure diseases?
The tribes of Amazon have perfected the process of using plants and even insects to cure diseases. This practice has been going on for years and should remain that way for the next generations.
Why is the Amazon rainforest important?
The Amazon rainforest plays an important part in regulating the world’s oxygen and carbon cycles.
How do plants help the Amazon ecosystem?
The Amazon’s plants play an active role in regulating the ecosystem. As plants in the Amazon photosynthesize, they create their own weather. Through a process called transpiration, plants release water vapor from pores along the underside of their leaves.
How many indigenous people live in the Amazon rainforest?
Nearly 500 indigenous communities call the Amazon rainforest home. It’s a highly biodiverse ecosystem, home to untold species of plants and animals. The rainforest can create its own weather and influence climates around the world.
Which is the most biodiverse ecosystem in the world?
It's one of the most biodiverse ecosystems in the world. The Amazon rainforest is the world’s largest rainforest and covers more than two million miles of land. It stretches across nine South American countries: Brazil, Columbia, Peru, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana. The lush region provides important benefits ...
What are the animals that live in the Amazon?
An Abundance of Animals. From pond-hopping poison frogs to spotted jaguars slinking around in the dead of night, the Amazon houses some of the world’s most charismatic plants and animals . It’s one of the most diverse ecosystems in the world, home to 10 percent of the world’s species, according to the World Wildlife Fund.
What are the foods that are grown in the rainforest?
Many of them have important medicinal uses or are found in the foods we eat. Chocolate, vanilla, cinnamon, pepper, and coffee are grown in the rainforest. Rubber trees produce a sticky, white latex sap that holds our planet together and provides a source of income for indigenous communities living in the rainforest.
Which river has the most rainfall?
The Amazon River's Riches. Erik SampersGetty Images. The Amazon River is the second longest river in the world, next to the Nile. Its winding waterways cover roughly nearly 4,000 miles, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The Amazon has the highest rate of rainfall in the world, according to National Geographic.
How much does the rainforest contribute to Brazil's economy?
The rainforest contributes about $8.2 billion a year to Brazil's economy from products including rubber and timber. In recent months, the Amazon region has been hit by thousands of fires that collectively have cleared more than 7,400 square miles of rainforest in Brazil.
What is the Amazon rainforest?
The Amazon rainforest is a vast tract of largely untamed jungle that is Earth’s most biodiverse region, filled with plants and trees and teeming with animals of all types and sizes — including many unknow n to science. It is also the world's largest rainforest, spanning more than 2 million square miles in northern South America, ...
Why is the Amazon rainforest called a rainforest?
It’s called a rainforest because of its rainy conditions. But though it has existed for 50 million years, the Amazon rainforest is now under threat from human activities, including devastating fires set to clear acreage for ranching and agriculture as well as the mining of oil and gas, copper, iron and gold.
What would happen if the Amazon rainforest was deforested?
That could cripple regional economies and cause the loss of many indigenous species. “It is a scary prospect, the potential for a dieback or a collapse of the Amazon region,” Morton says.
What would happen if vegetation burned?
If the burning of vegetation released all that carbon into the atmosphere, efforts to limit climate change by cutting down on carbon dioxide emissions from motor vehicles and industrial processes would become pointless, says Yadvinder Malhi, an ecologist at the University of Oxford in England.
Does the Amazon rainforest have oxygen?
Despite some media reports to the contrary, scientists say the loss of the Amazon rainforest wouldn’t dangerously limit sources of breathable oxygen. The oxygen created by vegetation in the rainforest is largely consumed by the animals living there. Most of the oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere was created over millions of years by microscopic ocean ...
Why is the Amazon rainforest important?
Why Is The Amazon So Important? The Amazon rainforest is a wondrous and beautiful place, full of mighty rivers and lush green trees. But, beneath its glossy green exterior, it’s working hard to provide the world with countless benefits. Without the Amazon the entire world’s climates would be thrown off, the atmosphere would be polluted ...
How does the Amazon rainforest contribute to the climate?
The Amazon Rainforest is said to be responsible for as much as 75% of its own rainfall, which feeds the nearby rivers through evapotranspiration.
What is the most biodiverse place on earth?
The Amazon is the most biodiverse terrestrial place on the planet. This amazing rainforest is home to more species of birds, plants and mammals than anywhere else in the world. Around 30% of the world’s species, and 10% of the world’s biodiversity, can be found there. The Amazon is also home to hundreds of endemic and endangered plant ...
How much carbon is stored in the Amazon rainforest?
Carbon Storage in the Amazon Rainforest. The Amazon Rainforest contains over one third of all the carbon stores in the world, that’s around 86 billion tonnes of CO2. Photo credit: shutterstock.
What tribes used plants to cure diseases?
The indigenous tribe Yanomamo have used plants to cure diseases for hundreds of years, and many of their findings have been applied to the more modern ‘western’ medicine. It is believed that only 0.5% of the plant species found in the Amazon have been studied for their medicinal properties.
How many trees absorb CO2?
Trees are natural CO2 absorbers, they use it for photosynthesis, and then pump out lovely, clean oxygen. The Amazon contains over 400 billion trees, which all absorb humongous amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere. One study that was published in Global Change Biology stated that c.
How does the Amazon basin affect the climate of South America?
Recent research has found that the rainfall in the Amazon Basin not only affects South America’s climate, but it also influences rainfall in Central and Western United States.
What are the natural resources of the Amazon rainforest?
Mining and logging. A variety of infrastructure projects. OIL SPILL: The Amazon rainforest is rich in natural resources, including petroleum. Unfortunately, this is all too often what meets the eye when the petroleum has been extracted from the ground.
What percentage of the world's biomass is in the Amazon rainforest?
The Amazon rainforest contains 10 percent of all biomass on Earth. It means that when deforestation takes place, the vast amounts of carbon that the forest stores are released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that contributes significantly to global warming. DEPEND ON THE FOREST: The Yanomami in northern Brazil are among ...
What is the most important ecosystem in the world?
The Amazon rainforest: the world's most important ecosystem. Half of the planet's rainforests have already disappeared. The Amazon is still the most extensive rainforest on earth, but a disastrously large part of it is now in danger of disappearing for good. Our goal is to prevent that disaster. GREEN CARPET: Peru holds the second largest area ...
How long has it taken for the Amazon rainforest to be destroyed?
It has taken nature millions of years to create the Amazon rainforest, yet humans have destroyed large parts of it in only a few generations. Humans began damaging the forest when South America's modern states emerged.
How many people live in the Amazon rainforest?
The Amazon rainforest may be home to some 30 million people. Some 1.6 million of these inhabitants are indigenous, and they belong to more than 400 different indigenous groups. Some are isolated tribes who choose to avoid contact with the outside world.
Which country has the second largest rainforest in the world?
GREEN CARPET: Peru holds the second largest area of rainforest of the countries in the Amazon region. This photo was taken in the country’s east. Photo: Wolter Silveira. The Amazon rainforest stretches across 5.5 million square kilometers/2.1 million square miles – an area far more extensive than the EU and more than half of the US.
How much of the world's fresh water is in the Amazon River?
All figures describing some aspect of the Amazon tell us about the region’s unique status on the planet: The enormous Amazon river, with all its tributaries, contains 20 percent of the world’s flowing fresh water. Though the Amazon covers only four percent of the earth’s surface, it contains a third of all known terrestrial plant, animal, ...
What is the role of Amazon biodiversity?
Amazon biodiversity also plays a critical role as part of global systems, influencing the global carbon cycle and thus climate change, as well as hemispheric hydrological systems, serving as an important anchor for South American climate and rainfall. While most people are familiar with the fact that the Amazon stores large amounts ...
Why is the Amazon important?
Why is this biodiversity so important? The Amazon’s forest and rivers host an extraordinary variety of species, some endemic, others endangered, and many of which are still unknown.
Why is it important to connect protected areas?
Connecting protected areas will help make biodiversity more secure, since as climate change effects are felt, animals and plants try to track their required conditions, meaning isolated areas are problematic and connecting them is the path to the future.
What are some examples of sustainable bioeconomies?
If farmers see income streams from activities that protect the forest, I imagine this will get a good response. Another example is fisheries and aquaculture. These are really important in both bio-economy terms and for feeding the world’s growing population.
Why is biodiversity important?
Biodiversity is also important locally, constituting a natural capital underpinning many human activities, in particular livelihoods of the world’s poor. For example, the giant catfish is an important local staple.
Why do ants collect leaves?
These ants collect leaves as mulch for their fungus farms, deliberately avoiding those with natural fungicides. Studying the species they avoid might be a shortcut to identifying new natural fungicides. Knowledge of indigenous populations have a large role to play in uncovering this potential.
Who is the Amazon expert?
Amazon expert and leading ecologist Thomas Lovejoy discusses threats to the Amazon and how best to manage them. Nature is declining at a rate unprecedented in human history, confirmed by the landmark new report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services ...
How much of the Amazon rainforest has been lost?
Jeopardizing a pillar of life on Earth. During the last half century, the seemingly endless Amazon has lost at least 17% of its forest cover, its connectivity has been increasingly disrupted, and numerous endemic species have been subjected to waves of resource exploitation.
What are the biomes of the Amazon?
The complete watersheds expand beyond the biome and sometimes include adjacent biomes (dry forest, cerrado and puna).
How many countries are there in the Amazon biome?
The biome encompasses 6.7 million km2 and is shared by eight countries (Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana and Suriname), as well as the overseas territory of French Guiana. The complete watersheds expand beyond the biome and sometimes include adjacent biomes (dry forest, cerrado and puna).
How does the canopy of the Amazon affect climate?
The Amazon’s canopy cover helps regulate temperature and humidity, and is intricately linked to regional climate patterns through hydrological cycles that depend on the forests. Given the enormous amount of carbon stored in the forests of the Amazon, there is tremendous potential to alter global climate if not properly stewarded.
How much carbon is in the Amazon?
The Amazon contains 90-140 billion metric tons of carbon, the release of even a portion of which would accelerate global warming significantly. Currently, land conversion and deforestation in the Amazon release up to 0.5 billion metric tons of carbon per year, not including emissions from forest fires, thus rendering the Amazon an important factor ...
The Human Impact
Known for its lush forestry, exotic animals, and indigenous cultures, the Amazon rain forest remains a richly interdependent hub of biodiversity. Today, the Amazon faces a myriad of challenges presented by the increasing anthropogenic demand for its many natural resources.
Lesson and Activities
Activity (Grades 6-8) How will the construction of a transcontinental railroad through the Amazon rain forest affect the ecosystem and indigenous territories? This activity is also available in Spanish and Portuguese.
Profiles of Amazon Experts
National Geographic sits down with conservation biologist Juliana Machado Ferreira.
Funders
Educational resources for this project funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the BIO Program at the Inter-American Development Bank.
Medicine
Climate Control
- Tropical forests exchange a tonne of water and energy with the surrounding atmosphere, and as such, they are thought to contribute greatly to both local and regional climates. The Amazon Rainforest is said to be responsible for as much as 75% of its own rainfall, which feeds the nearby rivers through evapotranspiration. The water from the rivers th...
Carbon Storage in The Amazon Rainforest
- We’re all aware of the seriousness of global warming and it’s clear to see that we as a species produce a lot of carbon dioxide. Over the last 150 years, humans have been burning fossil fuels, using coal, oil and gas, pumping countless tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere. Trees are natural CO2 absorbers, they use it for photosynthesis, and then pump out lovely, clean oxygen. The Ama…
Biodiversity
- The Amazon is the most biodiverse terrestrialplace on the planet. This amazing rainforest is home to more species of birds, plants and mammals than anywhere else in the world. Around 30% of the world’s species, and 10% of the world’s biodiversity, can be found there. The Amazon is also home to hundreds of endemic and endangered plant and animal species. With the Amazon River…
Tourism
- Ecotourism is fast becoming one of the most popular types of tourism in the world. People are no longer happy with sitting on a beach in the sun all day, they want to get out and explore the natural wondersof this planet. The Amazon is one of the best places to do this. Although ecotourism in the Amazon is still young, it’s already producing huge revenues for the local communities. This …