Life, and what is being lost

Life in the forest

Rainfall is over 60 mm of rain in every month, giving rise to thick rainforest and some of the highest densities of biodiversity seen on land. Met Office Tropical rainforests, which worldwide make up one of Earth’s largest biomes (major life zones), are dominated by broad-leaved trees that form a dense upper canopy and contain a diverse array of vegetation and other life. Britannica It is no surprise, therefore, to find the greatest diversity of flowering plants today in the tropical rainforests where they first evolved. Britannica Tropical rainforests today serve as sinks for more than 50 percent of all atmospheric carbon dioxide absorbed by plants annually, and they exhibit unparalleled biodiversity. Britannica

A NASA Earth Observatory feature dated 31 December 2002, still on the page we checked, says that perhaps as much as one half of all life forms on the planet live in the Amazon River Basin, and later that the region supports perhaps half of all species on the planet. NASA Ten per cent of the world's biodiversity is thought to exist within this region, in the Met Office's 2024 wording. Met Office

Protecting forests is key to conserving natural resources, FAO says, as they harbour most of the Earth's terrestrial biodiversity and help mitigate climate change impacts. FAO According to the State of the World's Forests report cited on the same FAO page, forests contain 60,000 different tree species, 80 percent of amphibian species, 75 percent of bird species, and 68 percent of the Earth's mammal species. Those figures are for forests, not rainforest alone. FAO

FAO’s figures on this page are for forests in general, not rainforest alone. They still belong here, because rainforest is a kind of forest, and because the same page is careful about what deforestation means.

FAO's Global Forest Resources Assessment 2020 found that the world has a total forest area of 4.06 billion hectares, which is about 31 percent of the total land area. Those figures are for forests in general, not rainforest alone. FAO The global forest area continues to decrease, and the world has lost 178 million hectares of forest since 1990. However, the rate of net forest loss decreased substantially over the period 1990-2020. FAO Africa had the largest annual rate of net forest loss in 2010-2020, at 3.9 million hectares, followed by South America, at 2.6 million hectares. FAO In the five-year period 2015-2020, the annual rate of deforestation was estimated at 10 million hectares, down from 12 million hectares in 2010-2015 and 16 million hectares in 1990-2000. FAO defines deforestation as the conversion of forest to other land uses, such as agriculture and infrastructure. FAO

Not until the past century, however, has widespread destruction of tropical forests occurred. Tropical rainforests and tropical deciduous forests are now being destroyed at a rapid rate, Britannica says, to provide resources such as timber and to create land for other purposes, such as cattle grazing. Britannica

That interconnected system faces the threat of effectively drying out, "tipping" this region from lush rainforest to a drier state of degraded forest or even savanna grassland. Met Office Projections have shown that a combination of substantial deforestation in conjunction with climate change could be sufficient to set in train an irreversible path to one of these new states. There is uncertainty about just how quickly this could happen. Met Office