Rainforest Facts 🏞️
List of Alarming Rainforest Facts & Information 🏞️
Are you ready for terrible rainforest facts and news? The world’s tropical rainforest areas are constantly shrinking. Approximately 35 soccer fields of rainforest are cleared every minute. That makes 2,100 soccer fields an hour or over 50,000 a day. And all this just to harvest non-sustainable luxury woods, clear grazing areas for fast-food cattle, or to cultivate palm oil. We are destroying the very basis of our life for things the world does not need. How stupid are we human beings? Have we learned nothing or will we one day stop eating at burger joints and fast food chains or avoid products with palm oil? We live in hope.
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| The Rainforest 🏞️ | Rainforest Facts & Statistics |
|---|---|
| Total area of rainforest | Approximately 5,800,000 square miles (15 million km2) of land area on the planet are rainforest. That’s less than 2% of the total surface area of our planet and around 7% of the useable land surface, excluding ice areas. It was 17% just 50 years ago! |
| Distribution | There are three major rainforest regions on earth:
|
| Other rainforest areas | There are also rainforests in northern Australia, India, Madagascar and in all the countries of Central America as well as Cuba, Jamaica and the Bahamas. |
| Deforestation per year | About 6 million hectares or 23,166 square miles are lost EVERY YEAR. That’s around the size of the state of West Virginia or mainland Scotland. |
| Clearance per minute | An area of rainforest the size of roughly 35 soccer fields is cleared every minute. |
| Why are the rainforests being cleared? | There are 4 main reasons:
|
| Consequences of the destruction |
|
| Largest rainforest | The Amazon basin in Brazil, with approximately 1,351,357 square miles (3.5 million mi2) |
| Precipitation | There is little to no rain in the dry season, and 2000 – 4000 mm of rain (about 3 times as much as in the UK) in the rainy season. The rainforest knows only two seasons: the rainy season and the dry season. |
| Humidity | At least 70 %, but usually about 90 %. |
| Average temperature | Around 25° C or 77° F. |
| Plants | More than 1000 plants grow on in every 20 square metre or 24 square yards. |
| Tree species | Approximately 120 different species per hectare or 2.5 acres. |
| Bird diversity | 8600 different species of birds inhabit the rainforest. |
| Fish diversity | 3000 species live in the Amazon alone, compared to just 60 in European rivers. |
| Shady spot | Only 2% of sunlight reaches the forest floor. |
| Products from the Rainforest | Chocolate, sugar and gum. |
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- Rainforest facts list compiled by Robert Junker, last updated 04 Jun 2022
- Help us improve ADDucation’s list of rainforest facts by adding your comments below…
Facinating to see the difference between imperial and Canada and Australia. I was aware of the most of US differences, but not cup sizes.missing from list are the beer barrel sizes, keg, pin, etc. you could add champagne bottle sizes. And note that 640 acres is 1 square mile.