Amazon Rainforest
Biodiversity
Where?
The Amazon Rainforest is in South America. This rainforest is the largest tropical forest in the world and covers most of Brazil.
Important?
The Amazon Rainforest is extremely important to this world. For one, it keeps a lot of carbon in it's trees and filters much of the air. This one rainforest stores 86 billion tons of carbon or about one third of all carbon in tropic forest around the world. The Amazon has plants that hold elements that can fight cancer and cure simple sicknesses. These plants need to be protected because they are obviously helpful. This rainforest influences rain in many areas around. It strongly creates rain all through South America and even in some parts of the western United States. The last supporting evidence of how the Amazon is important is because it hold 30% of all species on earth.
Dangers For Amazon?
Deforestation is the biggest problem for the Amazon as of right now. It is an increasing problem that needs to be stopped. Over 289,000 square miles of trees have been chopped down since 1978. This creates a loss of biodiversity which can throw a lot in nature off, even for people in America. This can result in some species becoming extinct. Deforestation can even offset the water cycle because the loss of trees so quickly. This can harm a wide region of areas.
Saving the rainforest
This one tropical rainforest is house to over 1/3 of all species, 1/4 of the world's freshwater, and 1/5 of the world's forest. We need to protect this forest for the earth, but how can we do that? The biggest protection effort made yet is the biggest forest conservation project ever released. This group is the ARPA (Amazon Regions Protected Areas). This group alone has protected a California sized chunk of land across the Amazon from groups looking to harvest trees. This group just wants to see the land strive and become better. They are trying to restore faith in humanity!
Citations
http://rainforests.mongabay.com/amazon/amazon_importance.htm
http://theamazonainforest1.weebly.com/size-and-location.html
http://rainforests.mongabay.com/amazon/amazon_destruction.html
http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/where_we_work/amazon/problems/
http://www.nature.org/ourinitiatives/regions/southamerica/brazil/placesweprotect/amazon.xml