RAINFOREST ADVENTURER

What is a rainforest?
Rainforests are Earth's oldest living ecosystems, with some at least 70 million years old! Tropical rainforests are found in warm places, and are full of tall trees and leafy plants. It’s called ‘rainforest’ because it also gets a lot of rain every year, helping all the plants grow.
Because rainforests are warm, wet and dense, they are full of life - millions of different kinds of plants and animals live there. Today we’ll learn about the layers of the rainforest and get to meet some of its residents along the way.
Rainforests have an annual rainfall greater than two meters.

What does tropical mean?
A tropical country has very hot, often very wet weather. The countries found round the equator are in the hottest part of the world. About a tenth of the world’s land is covered by tropical rainforests.
Tropical rainforests are found near the equator and have an average daily temperature of 28°C. The hot, humid atmosphere creates a unique ecosystem full of biodiversity.

Tropical rainforests only
cover a tenth of the land on Earth, but are home to half the world’s living things.


The Forest Floor
The Forest Floor
Let’s take a walk through the bottom layer - the Forest Floor. It is very dark here as the trees are like a big umbrella above, shading the forest floor. Only about 2% of the sunlight can get through.
There are not very many plants because it is so dark. Plants need light to grow and the very dark conditions mean that very few plants get enough light to grow. Even though half of all the different kinds of animals in the world live in tropical rainforests, most of them don’t live on the forest floor.
The Emergent Layer
If you could fly above the rainforest it would look like a sea of green treetops and every so often there would be a taller, giant tree emerging above the canopy.
These trees can be 70 meters high. They are in danger of being blown over when there are tropical storms.