The Rainforest

A tropical rainforest is one of the earth’s most spectacular natural wonders!

Tropical rainforests are located around the equator— from the Tropic of Cancer in the north, to the Tropic of Capricorn in the south.
The largest rainforests are in Brazil (South America), Democratic Republic of Congo (Africa), and Indonesia (islands found near the Indian Ocean).
Other tropical rainforests lie in Southeast Asia, Hawaii, and the Caribbean Islands.

The Amazon rainforest in South America is the world’s largest, covering an area about two-thirds the size of the continental United States.

Rainforests are called rainforests because they’re wet!

Tropical rainforests are defined by their wet and dry seasons.
Tropical rainforests receive 160 to 300 inches (400-760 cm) of rain each year.
Compare this with the city of Los Angeles, which only receives an average of 10-20 inches of rain a year!
Also because rainforests lie near the equator, temperatures stay near 75-80 degrees Fahrenheit all year round, which is nice and warm.
Read about the "Waterworlds" and animals found in this area CLICK HERE
Read about the animals that live on land in the rainforest-CLICK HERE

What does a rainforest look like?

Picture yourself walking on a thin carpet of wet, rotting leaves. If you look up you see an umbrella of dark green leaves. Only a spot or two of blue sky peeks through the thick mass of tree branches and leaves. You see beautiful flowers growing wild upon the trees, as well as on the ground. You hear the constant sound of insects, birds, and falling twigs. In some rainforests, you might hear the sounds of large animals like the gorilla or jaguar.

There are so many species of plants and animals in the rainforest that, if you stood in one place and turned a complete circle, you might see hundreds of different species. This incredible number of species of living things is one of the major differences between tropical rainforests and the forests of North America.

A tropical rainforest consists of four layers: the emergent trees, canopy, the understory, and the forest floor.

The emergent and canopy layers make up the very top of the rainforest, where a few trees, called emergents, poke out above the green growth to reach the sun.

Most of the plant growth in rainforests is here, close to the sun.
Most rainforest animals, including monkeys, birds, and tree frogs, live in the canopy.
Below the canopy are the young trees and shrubs that make up the understory.
The plants in this layer rarely grow to large sizes because the canopy blocks most of the sunlight.
The forest floor is almost bare because very little sunlight can get through the canopy and understory to reach the ground.
This is where fallen leaves and branches rot quickly to release nutrients for other plants to grow.
Large mammals such as South American tapirs and Asian elephants who are too heavy to climb up into the canopy layer live in the dim light of the understory and forest floor.

The Amazon basin is filled from top to bottom with life. New species are discovered each year in the rainforest, and scientists guess that less than half of the existing species have been described. Many of these organisms have remained unknown due to the remoteness of their habitat. For example, many rainforest species live only at the tops of tall trees unseen from the ground, while others live about half way to the top, making it extremely difficult to stop and look for them.

Activity 1

Research a plant or animal from the rainforest and identify its physical location within the rainforest (e.g., canopy, etc.).
Understand that different organisms live in different layers of the rainforest.
Contribute information to a group project about the organisms in a rainforest.
Make a presentation about their organism to the class.

Play the game Amazon Explorer -Click Here

The rainforest of South America covers over 2,700,000 square miles with little large-scale human development. Trees, shrubs, woody plants and vines cover the forest, though it is not like the picture most people have of a jungle. The majority of the forest is fairly clear of underbrush and easy to walk through. The bases of tall trees are seen in all directions, with the trunks disappearing into the heights of the canopy layer far above. The trees grow quickly, causing them to have very straight, narrow trunks with few lower branches. Many of the trees in the mature rainforest reach heights of 150 feet or more, which is comparable to the tall trees in most deciduous forests in the United States. However, unlike many tall trees in the forests we know, Amazon trees do not produce a deep taproot for stability.

The trees have to compete with their neighbors throughout their life. Each tall tree once started out on the forest floor in an area where a previous tall tree once stood. When that first tree fell, it brought sunlight onto the forest floor and a tangle of small plants sprouted. The current tall trees survived the tangle amd grew large enough to spread wide branches with leaves to absorb as much sunlight as possible. Over 80% of the forest's food is produced in the canopy and up to 2/3 of the animals and plants live there on the branches of the trees. The branches tend to radiate out from one area at the top of the tree, much like the ribs on an umbrella. The canopy of a tall tree may exceed 80 feet wide, making it a top-heavy monster on a thin trunk.

At one time in South America, the water in the Amazon River flowed from east to west and wore down most of the land to a broad, flat expanse. As the continental plate containing South America moved, it collided with the Nazca plate of the Pacific, which caused the Andes Mountains to form on the western part of the continent. The waters reversed and now the Amazon basin drains across the old, erosion-worn drainage basin, a distance of several thousand miles. The land that is left has few minerals and nutrients and is covered in a base of compacted clay that prevents the passage of water and the deep growth of plant roots.

Most of the roots of the tall trees can only penetrate a short distance, leaving them with little support. They have developed several unique support strategies that students will discover in this activity.

Tall trees in the Amazon basin are dependent on the other trees around them. The wide canopies at the top which touch one another keep the wind from striking the tree from the side. At the forest floor, it is rare to feel any wind at all. Thus, the support structures of individual trees have evolved to provide vertical support, not support from sideways stresses. When an area of the forest is opened due to cutting, a larger area of trees will be affected as the wind takes its toll.

The bases of the trees take on one of three distinct shapes to provide support. One group has a network of wide roots that connect to the base and run across the surface of the ground. They may run for many feet in all directions so that any sideways stresses can be distributed throughout the network. This is represented by tape that runs across the floor to the base of the broom. Another strategy is the formation of large buttresses much like those found on gothic cathedrals. The buttresses are thin extensions at the tree's base that give the tree's trunk a deeply folded appearance. Each buttress acts as a prop against stresses. Cardboard strips or other thin props alongside the broom handle represents this strategy. The last strategy is the formation of many prop-roots that come from the lower part of the trunk. Prop-roots are many small roots that surround the tree to such a density that the trunk may not be seen through them. Strings running from the broom handle to the ground represent this strategy.

ACTIVITY 2

Give each student group one broom. The object of the exercise is for the students to construct a support system that will hold the broom vertical for a period of one minute.

Rainforest plants and animals depend on each other

In all of nature, and especially in rainforests, plants and animals depend on each other for survival.

This is called interdependence. Some insects can only survive in one type of tree, while some birds only eat one type of insect.

If this tree is destroyed, the insects will have no home.

If the insects die, the birds who rely on them for food will starve to death. Because of this interdependence, if one type of plant or animal becomes extinct, several others could be in danger of extinction as well.

Read about the Canopy animals here -

The secret to making this system work?

One secret to this lush environment is that the rainforest reuses almost everything that falls to the ground and decays.

When leaves fall from the trees, when flowers wilt and die, and when any animal dies on the forest floor, it decays and all of the nutrients in the decayed species are recycled back into the roots of the trees and plants.

Only the top few inches of rainforest soil have any nutrients.

Most of the nutrients are in the biomass, the bulk of animal and plant life above the ground.

The roots of rainforest trees are not very deep; that way they can collect all of the nutrients in the top few inches of the soil.

Rainforests even recycle their own rain! As water evaporates in the forest it forms clouds above the canopy that later fall as rain.

Humans depend on rainforests

Rainforests are essential—not just to those who live in or near them, but to everyone on the whole planet.

They help control the world’s climate. However, when the rainforests are burned and cleared, carbon is released that causes the weather to be much hotter. This is called the greenhouse effect.

People also use many rainforest materials.

Many of our medicines come from plants that grow in rainforests. Perhaps someday the cure for cancer or AIDS will be found in a tropical rainforest.
Some of the medicines we now use come from tropical rainforest plants, such as aspirin, heart disease treatment, and painkillers.
Many products, such as medicines and Brazil nuts, can be taken from rainforests without destroying them; but other products—such as timber, gold, and oil— require a more destructive method of extraction.
Logging for tropical timber and gold mining has contributed to much of the destruction of tropical rainforests.

The rainforests of the world are a tremendous resource for many of the world's people, including Americans. Many of the things we buy at the store and use every day like fruits, vegetables, ingredients for medicines, and construction materials come from the rainforest. And scientists believe that's just the tip of the iceberg: there are many species of plants and animals in the rainforest that haven't even been discovered yet! Rainforests are disappearing at the rate of 3,800 acres a day, largely because some of the things that come from the rainforest (like lumber, oil, and gold) aren't sustainably harvested. Human and animal generations will not be able to benefit from the rainforest's future resources if this continues.

Read about Powerful Plants here- Click here to learn more

Life in the tropical rainforest

Indigenous, or native, peoples have lived in tropical forests for thousands of years.

They use every part of the forest in a sustainable manner, or in a way that does not destroy the forest.

Recently, many other people have moved to tropical rainforests, and some of them have used the forests in ways that destroy them.

A rainforest cannot be replaced. Once it is destroyed it is gone forever. Once the web of interdependence has been broken, plants and animals have no way to rebuild their complex communities.

Rainforests have been evolving for 70 to 100 million years. They contain plants and animals that live nowhere else on earth.

When a rainforest is destroyed, so are the plants and animals who have lived there for millions of years. Once they are destroyed, they will only be memories of our past. It is up to us to help preserve the rainforest before it is too late!

Tropical rainforests are home to the largest and the smallest, the loudest and the quietest of all land animals, as well as some of the most dangerous, most beautiful, most endearing, and strangest looking animals on earth. You’ve probably heard of some of them:

jaguars, toucans, parrots, gorillas, and tarantulas all make their home in tropical rainforests.

But have you ever heard of the aye-aye? Or the okapi? There are so many fascinating animals in tropical rainforests that millions haven’t been studied or even named yet. In fact, about half of all the earth’s animal species live in tropical rainforests.

Scientists believe that there is a great diversity of animals in rainforests because rainforests are the oldest ecosystems on earth.
Some rainforests in Southeast Asia have been around for at least 100 million years, when dinosaurs roamed the earth.
During the Ice Ages, the last of which ended about 10,000 years ago, the frozen areas of the North and South Poles spread over much of the earth, causing a high rate of animal extinction. But the giant freeze did not reach a number of refuges in tropical rainforests. Therefore, rainforest plants and animals continued to evolve, developing into the most diverse and complex ecosystems on earth.
The nearly perfect conditions for life also helped contribute to the great number of species.
- With temperatures constant at 75 -80 degrees Fahrenheit year-round, animals don’t have to worry about freezing during cold winters or finding shade in the hot summers.
- They rarely have to search for water, since rain falls almost every day in tropical rainforests.
- Some rainforest species have populations that number in the millions.
- Other species consist of only a few dozen individuals.
- Living in limited areas, most of these species are endemic, which means that they are found nowhere else on earth.
- The Maues marmoset, a species of monkey, wasn’t discovered until recently.
  - Its entire population lives within a few square miles in the Amazon rainforest.
  - This monkey is so small it could sit in a person’s hand!

If you were to visit a rainforest, you probably wouldn’t run into many jaguars or monkeys, but you would see millions of insects creeping and crawling around every layer of the rainforest.

There are millions of different species of invertebrates living in rainforests.
One scientist found 50 different species of ants on a single tree in Peru! You would probably only need a few hours of poking around in a rainforest to find an insect unknown to science. You could even name it after yourself! Insects are often beautiful and always fascinating.
Have you ever heard of an ant that farms? Or ants that act as security guards?
- Leaf-cutter, or parasol ants, can rightfully be called the world’s first farmers.
  - They climb trees up to 100-feet tall and cut out small pieces of leaves.
  - They then carry these fragments, weighing as much as 50 times their body weight, back to their homes.
  - Sometimes they need to travel 200 feet, equal to an average human walking about 6 miles with 5,000 pounds on his or her back!
  - The forest floor is converted to a maze of busy highways full of these moving leaf fragments. These ants don’t eat the leaves they have collected, but instead bury them underground.
  - The combination of leaves and substances that the ants produce such as saliva allows a type of fungus to grow.
  - This fungus is the only food that they need to eat.
- Azteca ants live on the Swollen Thorn Acacia Tree, which offers the ants everything needed for survival—lodging, water, and food for themselves and their young.

Azteca ants and the Swollen Thorn Acacia Tree have the perfect partnership!

Many animals have to specialize in order to survive.

They adapt to eating a specific plant or animal, which few other species are able to eat. Have you ever wondered, for instance, why toucans have such big beaks? These beaks give them a great advantage over other birds with smaller beaks. The fruits and nuts from many trees have evolved with tough shells to protect them from predators. In turn toucans developed large strong beaks, which serve as nutcrackers, allowing the Toucans to break the tough shells and eat the nuts inside.

Many animals species have developed relationships with each other that benefit both species.

Birds and mammal species love to eat the tasty fruits provided by trees.
Even fish living in the Amazon River rely on fruits dropped from forest trees.
In turn, the fruit trees depend upon these animals to eat their fruit, which helps them to spread their seeds to far-off parts of the forest.
In some cases two species are so dependent upon each other that if one becomes extinct, the other species will become extinct as well.
This nearly happened with trees that relied on the now extinct Dodo birds.
- Dodo birds once roamed Mauritius, a tropical island located in the Indian Ocean.
- They became extinct during the late 19th century when humans overhunted them.
- The Calvaria Tree stopped sprouting seeds soon after.
- Scientists finally concluded that, for the seeds of the Calvaria Tree to sprout, they needed to first be digested by the dodo bird.
- By force-feeding the seeds to a domestic turkey, who digested the seeds the same way as the Dodo birds, the trees were saved.
- Unfortunately humans will not be able to save each species in this same way.

Every animal has the ability to protect itself from being someone’s next meal.

Each species has evolved with its own set of unique adaptations and ways of surviving.

An average of 137 species of life forms are driven into extinction every day in the world’s tropical rainforests.
Forces of destruction such as logging, cattle ranching, and oil drilling have contributed to the loss of millions of acres of tropical rainforest. Animals and people alike lose their homes when trees are cut down. These animals are given no warning to move— no time to pack their bags—and most die when the forest is destroyed.
Many large mammals such as leopards and apes need miles and miles of territory to roam and have a tough time surviving in the small, fragmented habitats they are forced into by humans.
Other species such as the golden toad, whose entire population lives on one mountain in Costa Rica, could become extinct within seconds from a bulldozer’s crush.
When rainforests are destroyed, animals living outside the tropics suffer as well. Songbirds, hummingbirds, warblers and thousands of other North American birds spend their winters in rainforests, returning to the same location year after year.
Destruction of the rainforest habitat has made it harder and harder for these birds to make it through the winter, and fewer and fewer are returning north each spring.
Habitat loss is not the only reason for species extinction.
- Thousands of monkeys and other primates are traded illegally on the international market each year, wanted for their fur, as pets, or for scientific research. Parrots and macaws have also become popular pets; buyers will pay up to $10,000 for one bird.
- Even the king of the jungle, the jaguar, is in danger of becoming extinct. Its fur is highly valued for use on coats and shoes. Pollution from mining has killed fish populations in the mighty Amazon River.
- Many indigenous peoples, who have depended on these fish for centuries, have become sick from the poisoned fish.

Extinction is a natural process.

Species like the saber-toothed tiger have died off from their failure to adapt to a changing environment.
Others like the dinosaurs died off due to a catastrophe such as a comet or asteroid striking the earth.
But today humans are altering natural habitats too quickly for animals to adapt.
Because of human activities such as logging and oil drilling, so many species are becoming extinct in such a short period of time that the impact on these activities on the diversity of life can be compared to a comet strike .
Humans must share the earth with all plants and animals; otherwise our carelessness will result in the continued extinction of many species.

It would be a sad world indeed without the beauty of a toucan or the grace and power of the jaguar.

Read more- PBS website about "Sacred Ground"

Rainforest Vocabulary

Biomass: Living and dead matter produced, including plants and animals.

Canopy: The highest layer of the rainforest, made up of the tops of trees. Animals such as howler monkeys, red-eyed tree frogs, sloths, and parrots live in the canopy.

Equator: An imaginary circle around the earth, equally distant at all points from the North and South poles. It divides the earth into two halves—the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.

Emergent: The rainforest layer that includes the tops of the tallest trees.

Evaporate: When moisture changes from liquid to gas in the air.

Extraction: To remove something (for example, to take out Brazil nuts from the Amazon rainforest).

Forest Floor: The ground layer, made up of tree roots, soil and decaying matter. Mushrooms, earthworms, and elephants all make their homes here.

Greenhouse Effect: The warming of the planet caused by chemicals which trap heat in the air. This process is being sped up by humans who put too many heat-trapping chemicals into the air. Some causes include car exhaust, factory smoke, and burning rainforests.

Interdependence: The concept that everything in nature is connected to each other, and cannot survive without the help of other plants, animals and abiotic factors (such as sun, soil, water and air) around it.

Nutrients: Food needed for growth by living things.

Species: A distinct kind of plant or animal that has many common characteristics or qualities.

Sustainable: Using products of the forest in a way that does not permanently destroy them, so that people in the future can also use them.

Tropic of Cancer: A circle around the earth, parallel and to the north of the equator.

Tropic of Capricorn: Similar to the Tropic of Cancer, but to the south of the equator.

Understory: The second layer of rainforests, made up mostly of young trees and shrubs. Animals that live here include jaguars, tapirs, fer-de-lance snakes, and woodpeckers.

Aye-Aye: a primate from Madagascar, whose most unique features are its one long finger and giant eyes. It uses its finger to pull out hard-to-reach grubs from trees to eat, and its eyes to see better at night.

Ecosystem: an ecological community; complete with plants, animals, and its physical environment, including soil, water, and air.

Endemic: plant and animal species living only in a certain limited area.

Invertebrates: species such as spiders, beetles and other insects who have no backbone.

Okapi: timid animals related to the giraffes who only live in the Congo river basin in Africa.

Primates: an order in the animal kingdom; species include monkeys, apes and human beings.

Rainforest Books

Bellamy, David. How Green Are You? Provides information and a list of activities to show kids and their families how to help save energy, protect wildlife, and avoid pollution.

Berger, Melvin and Gilda. Life in the Rainforest. For ages 5-9. Explores plants, animals, and people of the rainforest.

Cherry, Lynne. The Great Kapok Tree. . For ages 6-10. Story of a man chopping down a kapok tree. He falls asleep and is visited by forest animals in his dream, who convince him not to cut down the tree.

Collard, Sneed. . Green Giants. A profile of tropical trees.

Collins, Mark, Ed. . The Last Rain Forests. A World Conservation Atlas. Informational for teachers.

Cowcher, Helen. Rain Forest. For ages 4-8. Story recounts how the rainforest is a peaceful place until human beings threaten to destroy it with their machinery.

Forsyth, Adrian. How Monkeys Make Chocolate. . For upper elementary and middle school. Teaches about foods and medicines from the rainforest.

Forsyth, Adrian. . Journey Through a Tropical Jungle. For ages 7 and up. Chronicles a journey through the Monteverde reserve in Costa Rica.

Goodman, Billy. . A Kid's Guide on How to Save the Planet. Discusses environmental problems, many of which can be remedied if we work together to clean up the earth.

Goodman, Susan E. Bats, Bugs, and Biodiversity: Adventures in the Amazonian Rain Forest. For ages 8-12. Recounts the adventures of a group of 7th and 8th graders who witness the environmental wealth of the rainforest.

Horwich, Robert and Community Baboon Sanctuary. . A Belizean Rain Forest. Informative book about the Belizean rainforest animals, and a local conservation program that has spread worldwide.

Jordan, Tanis. Journey of the Red-Eyed Tree Frog. For ages 4-8. An exquisite picture book about this endangered species.

Lewington, Anna. Antonio's Rain Forest. Book about how people live in the rainforest.

Lewington, Anna. What do We Know about the Amazonian Indians?

Lewis, Barbara A. The Kid's Guide to Social Action. For grades 4-7. The guide explains how to solve social problems through creative thinking and positive action.

Pedersen, Anne. The Kid's Environment Book: What's Awry and Why. Describes what an environment is, how it becomes polluted, and steps we can take to prevent environmental destruction.

Pratt, Kristin. A Walk in the Rainforest. . In alphabet format, this book details rainforest species, their lifestyles, and their habitats.

Ross, Suzanne. What's in the Rainforest? 106 Answers from A to Z. For ages 2-6. An alphabet book of rainforest characters.

Silver, Donald. Why Save the Rain Forest. Book uses specific examples to teach children the importance of the rainforest and the need to preserve it.

Yolen, Jane. . Welcome to the Greenhouse. For ages 4-8. Invites children into the rainforest to learn what's inside this ecosystem.

Zak, Monica. Save My Rainforest. For ages 6 and up. A boy dreams of visiting the rainforest in southern Mexico, realizes his vision, and fights to protect this fragile ecosystem from destruction.

Websites about the Rainforest:

Amazon Rainforest at Wilderness Classroom - NEW!!!

http://www.wildernessclassroom.com/amazon/2008/04/getting_started_1.html

Journey through the Rainforest: journaling and photos of the rainforest.

http://photo.net/cr/rara/index.html

Rainforest heroes- site for kids:

http://ran.org/rainforestheroes/

Amazon interactive

http://www.eduweb.com/amazon.html

Animal pictures to download and color from Jan Brett

http://www.janbrett.com/mural_umbrella/umbrella_mural.htm

Rainforest plants and animals