Term Papers on The Vanishing Rainforest

Term Paper Title	The Vanishing Rainforest
# of Words	1072
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	4.29

The Vanishing Rainforest

     In 1500, there were about 7 million indigenous people living in tropical rainforests. Today, there are less than 200,000. The reason for this is because their natural home, the rainforest is being destroyed for the poorer countries that have these forests in their boundaries to make money from the products to pay off debts owed to other countries, including the United States.  The Forests are cut and burned to make room for animals grazing pastures, farming area, timber, sugarcane, rubber, tea, and coffee, and other assorted products.  The rate at which this is happening is incredible.  Brazil loses 5.4 million acres per year.  Globally, 2.47 acres are lost per second( two United States football fields) 150 acres per minute, 214,000 acres per day, which is an area larger than New York City.  78 million acres are lost per year, which is an area larger than Poland.  As you can clearly see, the rates of destruction must be stopped, or this bountiful ecosystem will be lost in about 25 or 50 years, never to be seen again.  With it, 2 million insect species, 100,000 plants, 2,000 species of fish, and 600 mammals will disappear in the Amazon Basin alone.  The same will probably happen all over the world.

     When a rainforest is spoken of, the meaning of rainforest is a climax or primary forest.  These forests generally have extremely high rainfall, which is greater than 70 inches per year.  These forests are found chiefly but not exclusively in the tropics.  The tropical rainforest is characterized by broadleaf evergreen trees that form a closed canopy, an abundance of vines and epiphytes (plants that grow on the trees), a relatively open forest floor, and a very large number of species of plant and animal life.  The largest trees have buttressed trunks and emerge above the continuous canopy, while smaller trees commonly form a layer of more shade-tolerant species beneath the upper canopy.  The maximum height of tropical rainforests is generally 100 to 165 feet, but some trees grow to 200 feet above the rainforest floor.

     When rainforests are cultivated, this is done in large areas of upland forests all over the world by a technique known as " shifting cultivation."  This has caused deterioration of the primary forest; in this system of agriculture the trees are killed in a plot of a few acres that is cropped for two or three seasons and then abandoned.  If the original plot is cultivated again before the primary vegetation has reestablished itself, the result is a progressive deterioration of the forest leading to coarse grass or jungle.

     The potential of tropical rainforests to provide the world with food, pharmaceuticals, building materials, natural pesticides, and other products has barely been tapped.  Already, these forests have provided hundereds of these products.  The possible loss of these and not yet discovered products is one of the best reasons to protect the rainforests.  To most people, the loss of these products effecting their lives is not a good enough reason to donate money for protection of these now endangered forests.  The consequences of this deforestation to the surrounding are...

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