EQUATORIAL RAINFOREST: CLIMATE, VEGETATION, FAUNA AND REGIONS - ENVIRONMENT - 2025

The equatorial or macro-thermal forest is the one that unfolds throughout the equatorial zone in response to a humid and uniform climate, which is continuously warm, not exposed to frost or cyclonic rains and which has abundant rainfall every month of the year presenting at most, only one or two months of drought.

The equatorial rainforests are characterized by their more than 2,000 mm of annual rainfall. These forests have the most abundant diversity on the planet, presenting 50% of the existing biodiversity. They have a well-developed form of tree canopy vegetation and are the winter home for large numbers of birds.

About two-thirds of the world's humid tropical forests can be considered equatorial in type. The largest extensions of the equatorial rainforest are found in the lowlands of the Amazon, part of Central America, the Congo Basin and the African coast of the Gulf of Guinea and the islands of Southeast Asia in Indonesia.

About 200 years ago, rainforests covered 10% of the Earth's surface. This has decreased to about 6% coverage today. However, about 50% of all living organisms on Earth are found in the equatorial zone.

Weather

The climate is characteristically Infratropical and Thermotropical Pluvial. Regions with this climate experience high temperatures throughout the year, and the heat causes convective storms every afternoon.

Average monthly temperatures are 26-28 degrees Celsius and can reach 35 degrees Celsius. The range of annual temperature difference is very small, it can be as low as 3 degrees Celsius, although the range between the highest temperature during the day and the lowest temperature at night is usually greater.

Humidity is usually quite high. Near the equator, the intense inflow of solar energy originates the intertropical convergence zone, a band of rising air convection that loses its humidity with intense and frequent rainfall.

Vegetation

In the equatorial regions, the heavy rainfall generates flora growth throughout the year. These jungles are characterized by having very dense vegetation. Four square miles of rainforest can contain up to 750 species of trees and 1,500 species of flowering plants.

Rainforests cover only 6% of the Earth's surface, but these rainforests are home to about half of the world's known animal species, providing about 40% of the planet's oxygen.

In the equatorial forests we can find between 40 and 100 tree species per hectare and fulcreas roots up to 9 meters high.

The landscape offers an abundance of lianas woven into the branches and trunks of the trees and in this type of forest there are hemiepiphytes or killer lianas.

Some trees such as kapok can reach more than 61 meters in height and, due to the covering provided by the canopy, very little sunlight is able to reach the lower layers of the equatorial forest. Under the canopy we can find the understory where sunlight is also limited.

In the equatorial forests, a layer of litter can be found that occupies the forest floor, a layer that, due to humidity and high temperatures, decomposes rapidly. Its nutrients are returned to the soil where they are absorbed by the roots of the plants. In this way, the nutrients are quickly and efficiently recycled in this type of rainforest.

The trees of the equatorial forest have adapted to the high temperatures and intense rainfall in this region. Trees very often have pointed spikes called drip tips which allow the rain to run off quickly. The trees in these forests do not need to have a thick bark to prevent moisture loss, so the bark is usually thin and smooth.

Fauna

Most of the animals that inhabit the equatorial forests are invertebrates, insects, arachnids such as spiders and scorpions and worms. There are around 500,000 species of beetles in these jungles.

In the Amazon jungle we can find 3,000 species of known fish and it is said that there may be a large number of still unknown fish in this jungle.

There is a great variety of herpetofauna consisting of reptiles such as snakes, lizards, turtles, crocodiles and alligators and a large number of amphibians such as salamanders, newts, frogs and toads.

We also find a hundred mammals such as jaguars, pumas, gorillas, chimpanzees, baboons and colobus, as well as elephants, hippos and manatees.

Equatorial rainforest regions

The forest of the Congo Basin

It is the largest block of tropical forest in Africa located in the Congo Basin, forming a horseshoe-shaped basin made up of sedimentary rocks that overlap an ancient Precambrian basement layer.

Most of the basin is below 1000 meters of altitude, with a flat or gently rolling topography and large swampy areas. The Congo River drains the basin to the west into the Gulf of Guinea, through the Gabon coastal plain.

While nine countries (Angola, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Zambia) have part of their territory in the Congo Basin, only six countries in this region are associated with the Congo rainforest (Cameroon, Central African Republic, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Equatorial Guinea and Gabon).

The forests of the Congo Basin essentially grow on soils with a moderate level of nutrients (at least among forest soils). In the center of the Basin there are extensive areas of swamp forest and reed swamp and some of these areas are uninhabited and largely unexplored.

The Congo rainforest is known for its high levels of biodiversity, including more than 600 species of trees and 10,000 species of animals.

West African rainforests

To the northwest, a strip of rainforest continues into the highlands of Cameroon, and along the northern coast of the Gulf of Guinea. After a gap of several hundred kilometers in the driest region between Togo and Benin, the rainforest appears and extends to the Atlantic coast.

In the Rift Valley region, the forest is confined mainly to the mountain slopes. A notable feature of the African equatorial rainforest region is its dryness. Only in the more humid parts of the highlands of Cameroon do they compare with the precipitations of the vast areas of the Amazon. They are rich in deciduous forests in their upper stratum. These forests tend to be more humid in the highlands of Zaire and Cameroon, areas where there are few epiphytes and few palm trees.

Due to agricultural expansion, much of the natural forest cover in West Africa has been lost and in Cameroon the same consequences are beginning to be suffered.

Forests of Madagascar

Madagascar is a micro-continent that separated from the eastern part of Africa at some point during the Jurassic period and this is reflected by its flora and fauna, to which a large number of plants and animals of Asian groups are added.

In the eastern part of the island, we find a high level of endemism (around 85% of the plant species are unique to the island). A group of plants that has diversified strongly in Madagascar are palms and we can find about 12 endemic genera of palm trees.

Orchids are very diverse in the Madagascar jungle, reaching almost 1000 species, the most notable being the white-flowered Agraecum sesquisedale.

Unfortunately, the flora and fauna of the Madagascar jungle suffer a great level of destruction by the hand of man, being a great variety of giant flying birds and lemurs destroyed by indiscriminate hunting.

The human population on the island of Madagascar is growing at a rapid rate and the destruction of the rainforest is occurring so rapidly that it is causing a large number of extinctions.

Rainforests of the Amazon and Orinoco

The Amazon is considered the "lung through which the world breathes, the great ecological giant of the planet". Approximately 20% of the earth's oxygen is produced in this jungle.

Its name is related to that of the Amazon River, a river that constitutes the life force of this tropical forest. The Amazon River originates in the Peruvian Andes, and zigzags east through the northern half of South America.

It meets the Atlantic Ocean in the Belem region of Brazil. Twenty-eight billion gallons of river water flow into the Atlantic every minute, diluting the salinity of the ocean more than 100 miles offshore.

The Amazon basin is home to the highest level of biodiversity on planet earth. The Amazonian forests develop under a humid climate. In the more humid parts of the region, with annual rainfall above 2000 mm and no strong dry season, the forest is taller and richer in species.

There are three types of forests in the Amazon region: swamp forests, liana forests and palm forests.

The equatorial rainforest of the Atlantic

Along the Atlantic coastline of southeastern Brazil is a long belt of equatorial rainforest. Separated from the main Amazon block by hundreds of kilometers of dry scrub and savanna, the Atlantic forest has a high proportion of endemic species and is one of the most threatened forests in existence.

The climate is more varied than that of the Amazon rainforest, fluctuating from tropical to subtropical. Approximately 8% of the world's plant species are located in this forest where we find more than 20 thousand species that are not found anywhere else in the world.

Around 264 species of mammals inhabit these forests, some 936 species of birds and some 311 species of reptiles are also recorded.

Caribbean rainforests

To the north of the Amazon jungle block, many of the islands that belong to the Caribbean Basin are partially or totally protected by the tropical forest.

The climate over most of this region is quite dry. These Caribbean forests are less rich in species than those of the South American jungles.

Among the tree species found in the jungles of the Caribbean, there is a great analogy with the rainforests of South and Central America and a large part of the species is also shared with the continent.

Pacific rainforests

In western Ecuador, Peru, and Colombia, there is a thin strip of rainforest that runs parallel to the coast. These forests are close to the Amazonian forests to the east, so many of the same plant genera are found to the east, however they often belong to different species.

The relief is made up of small hills, numerous streams and two main rivers, the Tumbes and the Zamurilla. The climate is generally humid, exceeding 25 degrees Celsius, the soils are alluvial and the vegetation consists of trees that exceed 30 meters in height and the highest are covered with epiphytes (bromeliads and orchids) and lianas.

The fauna is of Amazonian origin and we can find several types of primates, boas, pumas and jaguars. Among the birds we can find the stork, the royal condor and the hawk.

Malaysian rainforest

Malaysian rain forests include various types, depending on geographical, climatic and ecological influences. On the island of Borneo, the cloud forests are cold and humid.

Lowland rainforests in Borneo, for example, often face similar but less diversified peat swamps. The rainforests of the Malay Peninsula contain about 6,000 species of trees.

The Taman Negara rainforest in Malaysia is the oldest on the planet at about 130 million years. Taman Negara, which was declared a National Park in 1983, stretches through Terengganu, Kelantan and Pahang and covers an area of ​​4343 square kilometers.

The impressive diversity of wildlife in Malaysia's tropical forests includes large animals that biologists refer to as "charismatic megafauna."

Among them we find the orangutan, a primate that inhabits the forests of the lowlands of Borneo or the Malayan tiger, which has disappeared from most of its habitat. Smaller animals include the mountain pheasant, peacock, endemic to the Malay Peninsula, and flying foxes (Pteropus vampyrus).

Important facts about the equatorial rainforest

• About 70% of the plants identified by the National Cancer Institute of the United States that can be used in the treatment of cancer are found in the equatorial rainforests.
• A wide variety of fauna including snakes, frogs, birds, insects, pumas, chameleons, turtles or jaguars are found in equatorial rainforests.
• It is estimated that between 5% and 10% of the species in the equatorial rainforest will go extinct every decade.
• Approximately 57% of the equatorial forests are in developing countries.
• More than 56 thousand square miles of natural forests are lost each year.
• Insects make up the majority of living things in the equatorial rainforest.
• Due to large-scale deforestation, only 2.6 million square miles of rainforest remain.
• Rainforests are constantly being destroyed by multinational logging companies, landowners and governments to make way for new human settlements and industries.
• Trees in equatorial rainforests are typically so dense that it takes about 10 minutes for rain to reach the ground from the canopy.
• About 80% of the flowers found in Australian rainforests are found nowhere in the world.
• A piece of jungle equivalent to 86,400 football fields are destroyed every day.
• About 90% of the 1.2 billion people living in poverty depend on the rainforests for their subsistence.
• Much of the oxygen we have is supplied by the forests of the equatorial jungles, even though they are many miles away.
• The average temperature of the rainforest remains between 20 and 30 degrees Celsius.
• Wood, coffee, cocoa, and many medicines are produced by tropical forests.
• There are several different types of animals that can be found in the equatorial rainforest. Most of them could not live anywhere else because they depend on the rainforest environment for their basic needs.
• The largest jungle on the planet is the Amazon rainforest.
• Less than 1% of the plants in the equatorial forests have been analyzed to determine their value in the world of medicine.
• The equatorial forests are threatened every day, by practices such as agriculture, livestock, logging and mining.
• About 1/4 of the natural medicines have been discovered in rainforests.
• Within four square miles of rainforest, you will find 1,500 species of flowering plants, 750 types of trees, and many of these plants can be helpful in fighting cancer.
• Rainforests help regulate the weather patterns of planet Earth.
• A fifth of all fresh water is found in the equatorial rainforests, in the Amazon basin to be exact.
• Equatorial rainforests help maintain our drinking water supply, which is why they are critical to sustainability.

References

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