The Amazon Rainforest: Demonstration and Destruction

A demonstration of natures beauty

 

The Amazon rainforest is massive, it’s amazingly massive! The largest tropical rainforest in the world covering 1.4 billion acres and is split between many different countries such as Brazil and Peru. This place is amazing and has outstanding features of natural beauty but it’s not all just trees you know!

Rainforests only cover about 8% of our planet but over half the plant species that exists we’re found and live in the Amazon. It has about 40000 plant species and these have help medicine become what it is today. The discovery of plants, which still happens today in the rainforest, has allowed us to progress medically and produce lifesaving medication.

The Amazon rainforest is also home to many animal species and insect. Something along the lines of 2 and a half million insect species have been found in the Amazon, imagine waking up to that on you bedroom floor!  10% of the world animal species live in the Amazon and this includes some pretty dangerous animals such as the cougar, jaguar and the anaconda. Did you know that over 20% of the worlds bird species also live there too?

The Amazon is also a source of food for us. There are approximately 3000 different fruits in the Amazon. And we make use of about 200 of them! Let alone that 80% of the original food we eat comes from the rainforest. The Amazon is also sometimes referred to as the lungs of our planet. 20% of our oxygen comes from the Amazon as the plants take in our carbon dioxide (CO2) and replace it with oxygen.

 

 

A destruction of natures beauty

It’s not all good though. For the past 100 years or more humans have been causing damage to the rainforest for our own personal gain. Through deforestation 1.5 acres of Amazon rainforest is destroyed every second just to make way for new farming land. Being a rainforest you would assume the soil is rich in nutrients but you would be wrong. Once a patch of land is deforested and ready for farming after 2 years the soil is practically dead without any nutrients, therefore meaning nothing will be able to grow making it just a useless patch of land from what was once thriving rainforest. Although deforestation has declined slightly over the past few years it is still a big problem.

It’s not just farming that is causing deforestation. Severe weather changes in our climate meant that the Amazon suffered from droughts in 2005 and 2010 and because of this vast amount of vegetation was killed off. Scientists have estimated that if the planet increased temperature by just three degrees would destroy 75 percent of the Amazon rainforest.

Rain forests once covered 14 percent of the planet and now due to deforestation they now cover a tiny 6 percent. Today’s experts estimate that in another 40 years all of our rainforests could be consumed. The Amazon being one of them.