Tropical forest
**Tropical Forest Overview:**
– Tropical rainforests were the original flora covering Earth’s land surface.
– Canopy forests expanded north-south of the equator around 40 million years ago.
– The tropical forest biome was identified in 1949.
– The Paleogene epoch saw the emergence of drier, cooler climates.
– Tropical forests were not easily categorized based on tree canopy density.
– Factors affecting tropical forests include temperature, precipitation, and elevation.
– Soil characteristics like depth and drainage influence tropical forest nature.
**Types of Tropical Forest:**
– Tropical forests include evergreen rainforests and moist forests.
– Other types include open forests, coniferous forests, and savanna woodlands.
– Ecotones between these biomes may have unclear boundaries.
**Global 200 Scheme and Classification:**
– Classified by the World Wildlife Fund into three main tropical forest habitat types.
– Types include coniferous forests, dry broadleaf forests, and moist broadleaf forests.
– The scheme groups tropical and sub-tropical regions together.
– Shows the extent of coniferous, dry, and moist forest regions.
– Aims to categorize and protect diverse tropical forest habitats.
**Threats to Tropical Forests:**
– Tropical forests face disturbances like habitat loss and degradation.
– Climate change intensifies extreme weather events affecting tropical forests.
– Deforestation in hotspots is driven by commodities like beef, soy, and palm oil.
– Borneo lost significant old-growth forest due to fire and agriculture.
– Valuing ecosystem services may lead to more sustainable forest policies.
**Research and Publications on Tropical Forests:**
– Evolution of endemism on a young tropical mountain (2015)
– Dynamics of secondary forest landscapes in the Lower Mekong Basin (2007)
– Soils of tropical forest ecosystems: characteristics, ecology, and management (1998)
– Climatic and local stressor interactions threatening tropical forests and coral reefs (2020)
– Tropical forest recovery: legacies of human impact and natural disturbances (2003)
Tropical forests are forested landscapes in tropical regions: i.e. land areas approximately bounded by the tropic of Cancer and Capricorn, but possibly affected by other factors such as prevailing winds.
Some tropical forest types are difficult to categorize. While forests in temperate areas are readily categorized on the basis of tree canopy density, such schemes do not work well in tropical forests. There is no single scheme that defines what a forest is, in tropical regions or elsewhere. Because of these difficulties, information on the extent of tropical forests varies between sources. However, tropical forests are extensive, making up just under half the world's forests. The tropical domain has the largest proportion of the world's forests (45 percent), followed by the boreal, temperate and subtropical domains.
More than 3.6 million hectares of virgin tropical forest was lost in 2018.