TROPICAL RAINFOREST.

 

 

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Team members

 

 

1.        Natalie Lim       (Leader)
2.          Ong Mabel       (Writer)
3.     Nurul Rafiqah    (Researcher)
4.      Shen Xiaochun  (Researcher)

 

 

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Overview

 

Where can the tropical rainforest be found?

 

 Tropical rainforest can be on or near the Equator where the climate is hot and wet.

 

Most of the the tropical rainforests in the world are found in Central and South America, the lower Amazon, the coasts of Ecuador and Columbia.

The rest are in Southeast Asia like Malaysia, Indonesia, and New Guinea and in West Africa and the Congo.It is also usually found around the equator. Tropical rainforest are considered as a type of tropical wet forest or known as tropical moist broadleaf forest which also may refer to as lowland equatorial evergreen forest.  

 

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Level of human activity

 

Many species specialization makes them vulnerable to extinction. In addition to the species lost when an area is totally deforested, the plants and animals in the fragments of forest that remain may also become extinct.

 

The edges of some forests dry out and are buffeted by hot winds; mature rainforest trees often die standing at the margins.

 

-Soil Impacts

With all the lushness and productivity that exist in tropical rainforests, tropical soils are actually very thin and poor in nutrients. The underlying “parent” rock changes rapidly in the tropics’ high temperatures and heavy rains, and over time, most of the minerals have washed from the soil. Nearly all the nutrient content of a tropical forest is in the living plants and the decomposing litter on the forest floor.

 

 

-Farmer problem

 When an area is completely deforested for farming, farmers burn the trees and vegetation to create a fertilizing layer of ash. After this, the nutrient reservoir is lost, flooding and erosion rates are high, and soils often become unable to support crops in just a few years. If the area is then turned into cattle pasture, the ground may become compacted as well, slowing down or preventing forest recovery.

 

SLOWING DOWN / PREVENTING FOREST RECOVERY= LESSER TREES= GLOBAL WARMING.

 

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Physical Factors!

 

 

Light

 

 

In tropical rainforest, Sunlight is a major limiting factor. A variety of strategies have been successful in the struggle to reach light or to adapt to the low intensity of light beneath the canopy.

 

 

 

 

Temperature

 

-The tropical rain forest is a very wet environment; the temperature during the day is around 30ºC - 35ºC. At night it drops to between 20ºC - 25ºC.

 

 

Water

 

-Tropical Rainforest rain almost everyday. Minimum normal annual rainfall between 1,750 millimetres (69 in) and 2,000 millimetres (79 in)

 

Mineral salt

 

 

 

-The ground, that provides water and mineral salts are not fertile in the rainforest, since the organic matter quickly is disturbed by the heat and the humidity, and the nutrients are washed in intense rains.

 

Salinity

 

- Amt of salt in the water.

 

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Classification of Living Organisms

 

Producers of tropical rainforest are

mainly trees,leaves,plants. Others producers balloon algae, cocoa, banana tree and the brazil nut.

Consumers are

tapir, the jaguar, the howler monkey, the spider monkey,the sloth, insects, caterpillars, ocelots, puma.

Decomposers like

leaf-cutter ants, termites, bacteria, and fungi quickly turn falling leaves and dead organisms

into nutrients, as soil in the rainforest are only be used for a very short time before it runs out of nutrients.

 

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Food Web 

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Interrelationship in Ecosystem

 

Predator-prey relationship

Parasitism

- Relation between 2 different organisms. 1 receiving benefits from other by causing damage to it.

- Normally not fatal.

Mutualism

- Relation between 2 different organisms, both receving beneifts from the association.

- Examples:

Transportation (animals visit flowers and they transported pollen between the flowers the visit)

Protection against enemies. (like... ants attack the predators and parasites of certain aphids in exchange for access to the aphids' carbohydrate-rich excretions.)

 

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Useful Links

• [Yahoo] (www.yahoo.com/rainforest)
• [Google ] (http://images.google.com.sg/images?gbv=2&hl=en&q=mineral+salt+in+forest&btnG=Search+Images)
• [Wikipedia] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_rainforest)