Forests that receive more than seventy-eight inches of rain throughout the year are generally considered rainforests. There are as many as thirty or forty different types of rainforests, including evergreen lowland forests, evergreen mountain forests, tropical evergreen alluvial forests, and semi-deciduous forests. All rainforests, however, can be broadly classified as either tropical or temperate rainforests.

Tropical rainforests not only play an important role in the ecosystem but are also inevitable to the everyday existence of all species on earth. Tropical rainforests is home to as much as 50% of the species on Earth and various indigenous cultures. They supply humans with medicinal plants, foods, and innumerable useful forest products. In addition, rainforests are essential in regulating global weather, maintaining regular rainfall, and buffering against floods, droughts, and erosions. A significant amount of the world’s oxygen is also produced by rainforests. Rainforests are a vital part of Earth.

Tropical rainforests are defined by their wet and dry seasons. They receive around 160 to 400 inches of rain annually with temperatures of 75-80 degrees Fahrenheit year-round. These tropical rainforests are limited to only a small percentage of the earth’s land mass; they are mainly found around the equator, from the Tropic of Cancer to the Tropic of Capricorn. The largest rainforests are mostly in Brazil, Zaire, and Indonesia, while others are located in the Caribbean Islands, Southeast Asia, and Hawaii. The world’s largest rainforest is perhaps South America’s Amazon Rainforest, which covers landmass of approximately the size of two-thirds of the United States.

A tropical forest is made up of four layers, the emergent trees, canopy, the understory, and the forest floor. The emergent trees and canopy layers are the top layers of the forest while the understory and forest floor are the lower parts of a rain forest. So many species of plants and animals dwell in the rainforest that if a person stood in one place and turned a complete circle, he/she can see hundreds of different species.

In addition to providing a home for the world’s species, tropical rainforests affects every person on the planet in the most direct one. Rainforests help control the climate. With the gradual destruction of rainforests, carbon that is originally stored in them is now released to cause an increase in temperature, or otherwise known as the greenhouse effect. The rainforests also contribute to the medicine world. Many tropical rainforest plants are now used to produce medicinal drugs including aspirin, heart disease treatments, and painkillers.

Although the rainforests do provide numerous natural resources such as timber, gold, and oil, they are mostly destroyed in order to extract those raw materials. Once a rainforest is destroyed, it will be gone forever and cannot be replaced. There is no way to rebuild the complex chain of interdependent species once the system is disrupted. The rainforests that exist now have been evolving for the last 70 to 100 million years. They contain species that can be found nowhere else in this world. The destruction of rainforests also leads to the extinction of species that had never been discovered.