Tropical Rainforest
Bigass spider diagram, has the threats on too
- Created by: Brad_ers_B
- Created on: 03-05-14 20:28
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- Tropical Rainforest
- Rainforest resources
- Timber for construction of buildings or furniture
- Fuel
- Plant foods such as bananas, oranges, yams, grapefruit, coffee and cacao
- Bushmeat (eaten by local population
- Spices like pepper and cinnamon
- Palm leaves for rooding material
- Traditional medicines
- Fibres
- Resins for incense
- Biodiversity
- Wide variety of life makes for a more stable ecosystem more resistant to change
- Ecotourism helps as generates income without destroying forest
- Carbon sequestration
- The standing biomass of forests is a large store of carbon
- Forest growth removes carbon from the armosphere in the form of CO2 during photosynthesis
- Rainfall
- The trees put back water into the atmosphere by transpiration
- If removed more of the rainfall would flow directly back to the sea and reduce rainfall downwind
- Threats
- Fuelwood
- Used in LEDCs in mainly rural areas
- Wood cut down and burnt insted of having to pay a lot
- Usually unsustainable with little replanting
- Timber for construction and furniture
- Sometimes only addordable construction material available.
- Used to build houses and to make furniture
- Rainforest timber exported to other countries
- Slash and burn
- Burning the forest to be cleared
- Forest then farmed for a few years until nutrient depletion
- Site then abandoned as a new clearing is created elsewhere
- Mineral extraction
- Short-term needs for LEDC economies
- Can result in destruction of forests to exploit the minerals
- Reservoirs
- Hydro-electric power schemes can flood rainforests
- Decaying dead organic matter can produce anaerobic acidic water harming downstream river life
- Rates at which water is let out can damage life e.g. lizards and river turtles
- Grobal climate change
- Higher temps increase ability of the air to hold water vapour so rain may be less likely to form
- Many small orchids become rarer as humidity declines
- Loss of one species to a food web affecting all other species that rely on one and other
- Predictions suggest the Amazon will gradually be replaced by savannah grassland
- Fuelwood
- Rainforest resources
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