The Amazon Rainforest
Amazon Day
5th September 2018
The Amazon Rainforest is one of the natural wonders of our World. It is vital for the health of our planet, fundamental to the future well-being of our civilisation and essential as the natural habitat of thousands of species both known and unknown.
Some facts….
The Amazon Basin covers an area of 7 million km2
The Amazon River is the largest river on earth.
The Amazon forest makes up over half of the remaining rainforest on earth.
The Amazon is home to 390 billion trees and 16,000 species including the tapir, jaguar, capybara and manatee.
The Amazon Basin is home to some people who have never been exposed to modern civilisation.
The rainforest gets over 250 cm of rain a year and it is essential in powering the water cycle in this part of the World and furthermore there are knock on effects across the globe.
Sometimes it can take a raindrop over 10 minutes to reach the ground.
Interception, evaporation, transpiration, photosynthesis, protection from erosion and the recycling of dead and decaying animal and plant matter are all processes powered by the forest.
Such processes are fundamental to the regulation of our atmosphere, they drive the formation of healthy soil and energise the water cycle.
The location of the Amazon Basin in South America
The Amazon River – the largest river on earth.
The huts in the photo above belong to a tribe that has never been contacted.
In the 20th century it is the clearance of land that poses the greatest threat to the Amazon Basin and this truly amazing rainforest.
Unbelievably, more than 200,000 acres of rainforest are burned every day.
The challenge of preserving this rainforest for what must seem to many to be purely altruistic reasons, could well be one step too far for our modern and ever demanding civilisation. However, even if just for selfish reasons the forest must be preserved. Within the forest lie secrets that may help with the solutions and cures to many of the diseases and ills of our world. For this reason alone, even before considering all the other evidence that supports the conservation of the rainforests, it is well worth pulling together to secure the future of this extraordinary natural wonder of our World.
Deborah Boyd-Moss IDEAS & THOUGHTS On behalf of PLANET EARTH
