Modeling Amazonian transitional forest micrometeorology

What can mathematical modeling teach us about the micrometeorology of the southern Amazonian 'transitional' forest? Quite a lot, it turns out. This particular forest is located between the rain forest of the Amazon Basin ...

What is the wettest place on Earth?

Those who live along the "wet coast" – which is what people living in Puget Sound or the lower mainland of British Columbia and Vancouver Island affectionately call their home – might think that they live in the wettest ...

How bees find their way home

How can a bee fly straight home in the middle of the night after a complicated route through thick vegetation in search of food? For the first time, researchers have been able to show what happens in the brain of the bee.

New orangutan population found in Indonesia

(AP) -- Conservationists have discovered a new population of orangutans in a remote, mountainous corner of Indonesia - perhaps as many as 2,000 - giving a rare boost to one of the world's most critically endangered great ...

Dracula orchids and goblin spiders

Dracula orchids tempt flies by masquerading as mushrooms. Goblin spiders lurk unseen in the world's leaf litter. The natural world is often just as haunting as the macabre costumes worn on city streets, as highlighted by ...

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Rainforest

Rainforests are forests characterized by high rainfall, with definitions setting minimum normal annual rainfall between 1750–2000 mm (68-78 inches). The monsoon trough, alternately known as the intertropical convergence zone, plays a significant role in creating Earth's tropical rain forests.

From 40 to 75% of all species on Earth are indigenous to the rainforests. It has been estimated that many millions of species of plants, insects, and microorganisms are still undiscovered. Tropical rainforests have been called the "jewels of the Earth", and the "world's largest pharmacy", because of the large number of natural medicines discovered there. Rainforests are also responsible for 28% of the worlds oxygen turn over, often misunderstood as oxygen production, processing it through photosynthesis from carbon dioxide and through breathing to carbon dioxide.

The undergrowth in a rainforest is restricted in many areas by the lack of sunlight at ground level. This makes it possible to walk through the forest. If the leaf canopy is destroyed or thinned, the ground beneath is soon colonized by a dense, tangled growth of vines, shrubs, and small trees called a jungle. There are two types of rainforest, tropical rainforest and temperate rainforest.

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA