Amazon rainforest - Intro

Amazon rainforest is the largest rainforest on Earth and includes large area in South America between Andes, Guiana Highlands and Brazil Mountains, in the Amazon River Basin and is big as one quarter of total South America. This Earth's largest rainforest is one huge ecosystem with couple of million species of insects, plants, fishes, reptiles and other life forms from which some of them are still unknown to people.

Rainforests have most different biological systems in the world and they have critical role concerning the influence on global warming because they absorb carbon dioxide which is main cause of global warming.

In process of photosynthesis plants are absorbing carbon dioxide, creating oxygen in the process. In this process tropical rainforests have major role because they're absorbing more carbon dioxide than any other ecosystem on Earth. To classify certain forest area as the rainforest unique vegetative structure is needed. That structure consists of several vertical layers including the overstory, canopy, understory, shrub layer and ground level. All rainforests have closed rooftops where treetops are touching each other, creating shadowed forest interior in the process.

This picture shows distribution of tropical rain forests. This picture shows that Amazon tropical rainforest covers the largest area.

Since Amazon rainforest includes that whole big area mentioned earlier, it's not difficult to see why Amazon rainforest is often called „lungs of the world“. But since Amazon rainforest like all other rainforests presents rich source of wood and minerals, its very often uncontrolled exploit means serious problem and is one of the main reasons, if not the biggest one that's responsible for global warming and climate changes.