100 Facts Rainforests – Bitesized Facts & Awesome Images to Support KS2 Learning

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Virtually all deforestation is driven by human activity. The biggest drivers of deforestation are agriculture — both industrial and subsistence — and cattle ranching. Much of this production is not consumed locally — instead it is sent to cities or overseas. That means consumers who may live far away from rainforests are usually at least partly responsible for the destruction of these beautiful and important landscapes. The basin is roughly the size of 48 adjoining United States and covers some 40% of the South American continent. It actually covers around 2.1 million square miles. 3. It’s a record-holder. Terra do Meio Ecological Station, a pristine reserve under federal protection, has suffered invasions amid efforts to open up an illegal road cutting through the rainforest. Although they are a historically nomadic society, agriculture has become a way of life for many Mbuti communities today as they trade and barter with neighboring agricultural groups such as the Bantu for crops such as manioc, nuts, rice, and plantains.

Fact 35:About 70% of the plants identified by the U.S. National Cancer Institute, which can be used in the treatment of cancer, are found only in rainforests. Decomposers, such as termites, slugs, scorpions, worms, and fungi, thrive on the forest floor. Organic matter falls from trees and plants, and these organisms break down the decaying material into nutrients. The shallow roots of rainforest trees absorb these nutrients, and dozens of predators consume the decomposers! Bold new ideas are being proposed to save rainforests. For example, governments and companies are finally starting to recognize the value of goods and services afforded by healthy forests, including carbon storage, buffering against flood and drought cycles, and safeguarding water supplies. Accordingly these values are being used as another justification for protecting forests.Many biologists expect rainforests will lose 5-10% of their species each decade. Rampant deforestation could cause many important rainforest habitats to disappear completely within the next hundred years. Fact 5:There are two different types of rainforests, and they include both temperate and tropical. The tropical rainforests are the ones that are most commonly found around the world. Justice may soon be on the horizon for the Guajajara people: Paulo’s case will be the first killing of an Indigenous defender that will go before a federal jury, likely in the first half of 2024, after a court in late October denied a motion by those accused to try the case in state court. Some of the foods that come from the rainforests are chocolate (from the cocoa bean), sugar, pineapples, cinnamon, vanilla and more!

Tropical tropical trees such as balsa are lightweight yet very strong which means they make good building materialRainforest plants are rich in secondary metabolites, especially alkaloids. Many alkaloids from higher plants including caffeine, vinblastine are of health and medicinal value. Climate: because rainforests are located in tropical regions, they receive a lot of sunlight. The sunlight is converted to energy by plants through the process of photosynthesis. Since there is a lot of sunlight, there is a lot of energy in the rainforest. This energy is stored in plant vegetation, which is eaten by animals. The abundance of energy supports an abundance of plant and animal species.

Ecosystem services: rainforests provide a critical ecosystem services at local, regional, and global scales, including producing oxygen (tropical forests are responsible for 25-30 percent of the world's oxygen turnover) and storing carbon (tropical forests store an estimated 229- 247 billion tons of carbon) through photosynthesis; influencing precipitation patterns and weather; moderating flood and drought cycles; and facilitating nutrient cycling; among others. Watch this video episode of "Did You Know?" Quiz for Kids for even more fun facts all about the rainforest. One such initiative, Regrow Borneo, is facing the challenge by leveraging the expertise of scientists and local knowledge of community members who have been planting forests along the Kinabatangan for decades. While synthetic rubber, made from fossil fuels, accounts for the most of the rubber produced today, rising demand for rubber overall drove the expansion of rubber plantation areas by 3.3 million hectares (8.2 million acres) from 2010-2020.Fact 33:At the current rate of depletion, it is estimated that 5–10 percent of tropical rainforest species will be lost per decade. But REDD+, which is short for “reducing deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries,” has been widely criticized lately, in part because skeptics say that the accounting methods are open to manipulation by developers aiming to sell more credits — credits that many not represent a verifiable climate benefit. Cunha, Haydée A. et al. " When You Get What You Haven’T Paid For: Molecular Identification Of 'Douradinha' Fish Fillets Can Help End The Illegal Use Of River Dolphins As Bait In Brazil." Journal Of Heredity, vol. 106, no. S1, 2015, pp. 565-572., doi:10.1093/jhered/esv040