Tropical rainforests are woodlands around the equator with a lot of vegetation that is evergreen. It is very warm and rain falls throughout the year.

Although only 7 % of the land surface are covered with rainforests, more than half of the world’s plants and animal species live there.

Rainforests are very important for human beings. Plants produce food and medicine, and we get industrial products out of some of them. Trees produce timber, help control the earth’s climate and supply us with fresh air.

Despite these advantages, people cut down thousands of square kilometres of rainforest every year.

Half of the world’s rainforests can be found in the Amazon River basin in South America. Smaller rainforests lie in Central America and southern Mexico. The western part of Africa has about 2 million square kilometres of rainforest in and around the Congo River basin. Rainforests in Asia are found in southern India, Malaysia and on many Indonesian islands.

The world’s tropical rainforests

Climate

Temperatures stay the same the whole year round—about 20 to 30 degrees Celsius.

Around the equator there are two rainy seasons with heavy rainfall — up to 10 metres. When you move away from the equator, it gets a bit drier in some months , but there are still more than 2 metres of rain a year.

The weather hardly changes from one day to the next. In the morning it is clear . The sun starts heating up the ground and warm, humid air starts to rise. In the afternoon, clouds get darker and there are thunderstorms for an hour or two before it starts to clear up again .

Most of the rain stays in the rainforest . It evaporates , creates clouds and comes down again.

Rainforest soils are not very fertile because the rain washes out most of the nutrients.

Structure of the Rainforest

Rainforests have four layers.

• The top layer is the canopy. It consists of the tallest trees of the rainforest. They may get over 50 metres tall. But only very few reach this height. This is the part that gets most of the sunlight.
• The subcanopy is a layer of trees that is below the canopy. More than 70 % of rainforest animals and plant species live in the canopy and subcanopy. Lianas often climb around trees.
• The understory is the shadowy lower area. It has young trees and plants like ferns or palms that do not need much light. Only 1 or 2 per cent of the sunlight reaches the understory.
• The floor has a thin layer of leaves, seeds or fruits and branches that fall from the trees. It decomposes fast, and new material takes its place.

When large , tall trees die and fall to the ground, they leave a gap in the rainforest. Very quickly, smaller trees take this place and their crowns grow larger. That’s why the layers of the rain forest always change.

Rainforest canopy on the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean
Image :  © Vyacheslav Argenberg / http://www.vascoplanet.com/, CC BY 4.0,
via Wikimedia Commons

Plants of the Rainforest

About half of the world’s plant species can be found in the rainforest. Because it is warm and rains the whole year, forests stay green. Trees lose their leaves and immediately grow new ones. The rain forest is the home of many plants : lianas, ferns, orchids and many kinds of tropical trees.

Palm tree

Palm trees grow in the hot and wet climate of the tropics. They give us food, drink and sometimes building material. Most palm trees are found in Southeast Asia, South America and on islands in the Pacific.

There are over 2,000 kinds of palms. They grow straight and tall and most of them carry fruits, like the coconut.

Rubber tree

Rubber is one of our most important raw materials. Natural rubber comes from the juice of the rubber tree. It grows best in hot climates. The tree can be about 20 metres tall. It has smooth, shiny leaves. A white, milky fluid comes out of the bark if you cut into it. This is called latex.

Today, most rubber comes from plantations in Southeast Asia.

Orchid

Wild orchids grow in places with a lot of rainfall. Most species grow on trunks or branches of trees. In cooler regions, orchids are grown in greenhouses. Most of them grow in a mixture of fascinating colours.

Ferns at Melbourne Botanical Gardens
Image : fir0002 flagstaffotos [at] gmail.com Canon 20D + Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8, GFDL 1.2,
via Wikimedia Commons

White orchid
Image : Niall Kearney, CC BY-SA 4.0,
via Wikimedia Commons

Latex collected from a rubber tree
Image:  Irvin calicut, Public domain,
via Wikimedia Commons

Animals of the Rainforest

Fish, reptiles, birds and insects also live in the rainforest and its rivers. Plants and animals need each other to survive. Insects pollinate the flowers of the rainforest. Animals get food from the flowers’ nectar. Seeds from trees are often taken away by other animals and birds and dropped in faraway areas.

Piranha

The piranha is a fish with sharp teeth that lives in the lakes and rivers of the Amazon . It attacks and eats other fish and water animals. In some cases, it even attacks humans. Piranhas have flat bodies and can grow up to 30 cm long.

Red piranha
Image: Cliff, CC BY 2.0,
via Wikimedia Commons

Toucan

Toucans are typical birds of the tropical rainforests. They have big and long bills that are brightly coloured , so that they can attract other birds. The largest toucans can get up to 65 cm long. Most of them live in hollow trees.

Toucan
Image : Basa Roland, CC BY-SA 3.0,
via Wikimedia Commons

Gorilla

Gorillas are the largest members of the ape family. They have huge shoulders, long arms and short legs. They may weigh up to 200 kg.

Gorillas live in Africa near the equator. Although most of them live in the lowlands, there are some highland types.

People have hunted gorillas for a long time . As a result, they have become very rare and only about 1,000 gorillas live in the wild today.

Gorilla at Detroit Zoo
Image : RedGazelle15, CC BY-SA 4.0,
via Wikimedia Commons

Value of the Rainforest

People benefit from the rainforest in many ways :

• Economic value – Wood is the most important product of the rainforest. About 80 % of it is used for energy and 20 % is sold to make furniture. The forests produce other valuable goods like fruits, nuts, different kinds of oils and rubber.
• Scientific value – Scientists study the rainforest as an ecosystem. They learn a lot about how plants and animals live together. Tropical plants are used to cure diseases like malaria.
• Environmental value – Rainforests help to regulate our environment. Trees control the water that reaches the ground. They also take up a lot of rain. Much of this water evaporates and gets into the atmosphere again as vapour. Then it turns into rain and comes down to earth. Without rainforests, floods and droughts would be very extreme. Rainforests also help our atmosphere from becoming too warm.

Fog produces water vapour, which returns into the atmosphere
Image: Vyacheslav Argenberg (http://www.vascoplanet.com/), CC BY 4.0,
via Wikimedia Commons

People of the Rainforest

Most of the world’s rainforests are populated by indigenous people. These are people who have been living there for thousands of years . They depend on the rainforests for survival. Some people live in places that you can get to only by boat.

Many people collect fruits, nuts and firewood. They hunt and fish for food to stay alive. They burn down small areas of rainforest and grow crops there. When the soil gets too bad , they go to other places and plant new crops. This method of farming is called shifting cultivation.

Today, the living areas of these indigenous tribes are in danger, because other people have come here to chop down trees, raise cattle or mine gold and silver.

Woman collecting firewood in the rainforest
Image: Micleone88, CC BY-SA 4.0,
via Wikimedia Commons

Deforestation

People are destroying the world’s rainforests at a very fast rate. One of the reasons is deforestation. More and more trees are cut down every year because

• the world’s population needs more and more wood
• people in the tropical rainforest need energy. They can’t buy oil or gas because it’s too expensive.
• governments find valuable raw materials in these areas — like iron ore, gold or silver.
• dams are built along tropical rivers.
• big companies get land to grow meat and produce food.

Deforestation in the tropical rainforest
Image : Dikshajhingan / CC BY-SA 4.0

Videos

The Amazon Rainforest
Deforestation

Exercises

Multiple Choice Test
Match the Sentence Parts
Words and Definitions 1
Words and Definitions 2
Endangered Gorillas in Congo’s Rainforest – Missing Word Cloze
Crossword

Word Search

Printable Downloads (PDF)

Word List
End of Unit Test
Key

Writing Tasks

Email : Destruction of the Rainforest

Diary : Life in the Rainforest

As a junior citizen, you are very worried about the destruction of the world’s rainforests. Write an email to your local representative and tell him your view of this problem.

In your email you should

• ask if your government is doing anything to cope with the problem
• make suggestions on how rainforests can be saved
• suggest ways of helping people who live in the rainforests

Write about 200 words.

Deforestation in Borneo
IndoMet in the Heart of Borneo, CC BY 2.0,
via Wikimedia Commons

You are a member of an expedition team travelling through the Amazon rainforest. You have decided to keep a diary and write down what you have seen in the two weeks you have travelled. Write at least 2 diary entries.

In your entries, you should write about

• the plants and animals you have seen
• the weather you have experienced
• the native people you have met and how they live

Some animals and plants in our world are very common, like houseflies, cats or daisies. They are not in danger of dying out. Other species are very rare. Sometimes only a few of them are left. Such species may disappear forever.

Ever since life on earth began, animals and plants have died out and new ones have appeared. Dinosaurs, for example, roamed the planet during the earth’s middle ages. 65 million years ago, they disappeared forever.

Animals and plants need each other to survive. They keep the world of nature in balance. If a certain plant dies out, some animals may become extinct too, because they depend on the plant for food.

Image:  Clker-Free-Vector-Images
via Pixabay

Why Species Become Extinct

Long ago, most animals and plants became extinct because of natural events, like earthquakes or volcano eruptions. Climatic changes, like the beginning of the Ice Age, also led to the disappearance of certain species. Today, plants and animals are in danger mostly because of human beings

Some plants and animals can survive in many areas. When they move to other places, they adapt to their new environment very quickly. Others can only live in certain areas. We call such a living place a habitat. If a habitat is destroyed, the species cannot find any more food or a place to live, sleep or have babies. So it dies out.

Habitats can be destroyed in many ways. More and more people live in our world. They need more space to live in. Rainforests, grasslands and other parts of nature are cleared and people start to settle there. They take away the natural home of plants and animals.

Deforestation in the Amazon rainforest
Image: Daniele Gidsicki, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Pollution can also kill off certain species. Acid rain from factories goes down in rivers and lakes and can poison fish there.

The most endangered areas are the tropical rainforests. More than 50 % of all animals and plants live there. Every day, thousands of acres of rainforest are destroyed and many species become extinct every day.

Ever since man appeared on earth he has killed animals and gathered plants. They have been used for food, medicine, clothes and to make homes. Cheetahs, tigers and other wild cats have been killed for their skins. Whales have been hunted for centuries because of their oil and blubber.

Most animals today are protected by international law, but many, like the black rhinoceros and the African elephant are hunted illegally. Some species, like wolves, have been killed by humans because they were seen as a danger to farm animals.

The African elephant is in danger of becoming extinct
Image:  Bernard DUPONT from FRANCE, CC BY-SA 2.0,
via Wikimedia Commons

Sometimes native animals become endangered when a new species comes to live in a place. Foxes were brought to Australia to kill off rabbits, which were seen as a pest. But instead of killing rabbits, the foxes killed kangaroos and other marsupials of Australia.

Parasites belong to the greatest threats to plants and animals. Tiny organisms, bacteria and fungi can destroy trees, kill birds and fish.

How Can Endangered Species Be Protected

People have hurt plants and animals, but they are also willing to help them survive. All over the world organizations like the World Wildlife Fund, the Rainforest Action Network or Friends of the Earth are helping to protect habitats. They raise money for their projects and make governments and the public listen to them. New laws have also been made to protect endangered plants and animals all over the world.

Endangered Animals

African and Indian Elephants

Pandas

Reptiles

Sea Turtles

Tigers

Bald Eagles

The African elephant
Image: Andreas from Pixabay

African and Indian elephants are killed for their tusks, which are used for ivory earrings and other art objects

The giant panda
Image:  Dim Hou from Pixabay

The giant panda lives in zoos and in some parts of China. There are only about 1,500 left in the world today

Alligator in Louisiana
Image:  RENE RAUSCHENBERGER from Pixabay

Reptiles (lizards, crocodiles and alligators) are killed for their skins. People make leather handbags and shoes.

Sea Turtle
Image: Brocken Inaglory, CC BY-SA 3.0,
via Wikimedia Commons

Sea turtles are in danger because people often collect their eggs. They often die in the sea because of water pollution.

Siberian Tiger
Image: Appaloosa, CC BY-SA 3.0,
via Wikimedia Commons

There are only about five thousand tigers left in the world today. They live in southern Asia, mostly in national reserves.

Bald Eagle
Image:  Brigitte Werner from Pixabay

The bald eagle is the national symbol of the USA. The bird almost died out at the beginning of the century, but today the population is stable.

Endangered Plants

Some cactus types are in danger of becoming extinct because they grow slowly and are hurt by animals.

One out of three cacti are in danger of becoming extinct
Image by David Mark from Pixabay

The World Wildlife Fund

In 1960, biologist Sir Julian Huxley returned from a research trip to Africa. He was very much shocked by what he had seen there: the hunting of rare animals and the destruction of their habitat. Other scientists shared his opinion that something had to be done about this. The following year, Huxley, some fellow scientists and a few politicians founded the World Wildlife Fund. It became the largest conservation group in the world.

Today, the WWF has 5 million supporters around the world. It has national organisations in more than 50 countries and raises more than 100 million dollars a year.

The most important task of the WWF is to protect endangered species around the world. Among them are the tiger, whale, elephant and many others. The giant panda, one of the most endangered animals, has become the WWF logo.

The WWF also tries to protect habitats like the tropical rainforest. In the past decade alone, it has been able to conserve over 1 billion acres of forest in Asia, South America and Africa.

The organisation fights against the pollution of natural resources, and it is worried about the destruction of fish in the world’s oceans.

Over the past years, the WWF has been working on projects in over one hundred countries. It also gives money to research work and spends a lot to teach children and parents about our world in danger.

The giant panda has become the symbol of the World Wildlife Fund
Image: J. Patrick Fischer

Videos

Endangered Animal Species
Endangered Animals
60 Years of the World Wildlife Fund

Exercises

Words and Definitions
World Wildlife Fund – Multiple Choice Cloze
Match the Sentence Parts
TRUE or FALSE ?
African Elephants in Danger – Word Formation
Crossword

Wordsearch

Jigsaw Puzzle

Printable Downloads (PDF)

Word List
End of Unit Test
Key

Antarctica is the coldest and windiest place on earth. Almost the entire continent is covered with ice that is up to 5 km thick near the South Pole. Antarctica is a desert because it doesn’t get very much precipitation. Some areas get less than 70 mm a year, in the form of snow.

Antarctica has an area of about 14 million square kilometers, about one and a half times the size of Europe. The continent consists of many mountain ranges that rise up through the ice sheets. Ice flows down the valleys to the sea where it turns into ice shelves. When ice breaks off icebergs are formed.

Much of the ocean around Antarctica is frozen all year round. Some of it melts during the summer months but it still extends a few hundred km from the coast.

Even though the continent gets more sunlight than the equator it is the coldest place on Earth because the ice reflects heat back into space. The average winter temperature is about -70° C. Soviet scientists at the Vostok station recorded -89.2° in July 1983. Strong winds make the climate even more extreme and impossible to live in.

Image:Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica team,
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Animal Life

Today life only exists near the coastal areas of the continent. Insects, primitive plants and mosses can be found. In the interior part of the continent algae live in rocks that are free of ice. Over 20 types of seabirds breed in the Antarctic region, The best known are the penguins. Tiny sea creatures that look like shrimps called krill are important to the continent’s ecosystem. They are food for whales, seals, birds and other smaller animals.

Emperor penguins near Antarctic coast
Image:Image ID: corp2417, NOAA Corps CollectionPhotographer: Giuseppe ZibordiCredit: Michael Van Woert, NOAA NESDIS, ORA,
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Antarctica’s Past

More than 200 million years ago Antarctica, South America, India and Australia formed one big continent called Gondwana. As time went on this big mass of land broke apart and the continents started to drift away from each other. Under the ice sheets there is evidence that Antarctica once had a tropical climate. Fossils of ancient kangaroos were also discovered – proof that Australia and Antarctica once belonged together. The largest fossil ever discovered was a 9 meter long whale said to be about 40 million years old.

Exploration and Discovery

For centuries the existence of Antarctica was not known. In the 19th century expeditions from the United States, France and Britain explored the oceans and the coast of Antarctica. In the early 1900s the race got underway to reach the South Pole. The first explorer to reach the South Pole was Roald Amundsen of Norway in 1911. Close behind him was a British naval officer Robert Scott. Scott reached the Pole about a month later but he died along with his men on the trip back.

In the years that followed, explorers and scientists from many countries travelled to Antarctica. Among them was Admiral Richard Byrd, who became the first to pilot an airplane over the South Pole.

The modern age of exploration began at the end of the 1950s when many countries started setting up scientific stations on the continent. In December 1959 the Antarctic Treaty was signed by 12 nations. These nations have promised to use Antarctica for peaceful purposes. The treaty also forbids nuclear testing and military activities.

Amundsen’s team reach the South Pole in 1911
Image: Olav Bjaaland , Public Domain, via Wikipedia

The Present and the Future

Scientists study Antarctica in order to learn many of the world’s secrets. The ozone layer has become very thin over the continent. The continent is also believed to have mineral resources like oil, coal and many valuable metals. But Antarctica’s harsh climate makes finding these raw materials very difficult. In addition many governments are willing to protect Antarctica’s environment in the future. 24 countries signed a treaty that will forbid the drilling of oil and mining for the next 50 years.

Amundsen-Scott station at the South Pole
Image: Cmichel67, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Exercises

Multiple Choice Test
Match the sentence parts
Vocabulary test

Crossword

In the 20th century factory ships revolutionized the whaling business. Whales were caught and processed on board. Advanced technology made it possible to track whales in the water.

Whaling is important in Norway, Iceland and other countries in the northern Atlantic as well as in Japan. For many years, the International Whaling Commission set quotas for each country. In 1986, it banned whaling altogether, so that the population would recover. Some countries in which whaling is a major source of income, including Iceland and Norway, do not obey the ban set by the International Whaling Commission, but have set their own catch quotas. Since the ban, over 30,000 whales have been killed. Japan, on the other side, allows whaling for research purposes. Whale meat has always been an important part of the Japanese diet.

The IWC allows some people to continue hunting whales, for example, the Inuit of the Arctic region. They rely on whale meat for food and use whale oil in everyday life.

Native Americans carving meat and fat out of whales
Image: Asahel Curtis , Public Domain via Wikipedia

All in all there are thirteen types of whales. Many of these species have been extremely decimated. Some are showing signs of population increase, but the blue and grey whales are still in danger of becoming extinct. There are other threats to whales as well. Some are killed through collision with ships, others by the loud noises that ocean vessels make.

Whales are important to humans for many reasons. In remote regions, whale oil is still used as fuel for lamps. It has also been widely used to make cosmetics, soap, candle wax and washing powder. For centuries, baleen was used to make roofs. Many cultures used the mammal’s bones to make tools and carve masks.

The future of whaling is unclear. Although environmentalists are constantly campaigning against hunting whales, countries like Norway and Japan claim it is deeply rooted in their country’s tradition.

Over the past decades , whale watching has become an important part of the tourist industry in many countries. It generates about $2 billion in income worldwide and employs 13,000 workers.

Whale watching off the coast off Maine, USA
Image: The original uploader was NightThree at English Wikipedia., CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons