Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Amazon

Amazon Rain forest or the Amazon jungle is popularly known as Amazonia. The forest area covers 5500000 square kilometer or 1.7 billion acres of land. This forest includes territory belongs to nine nations of South America. 60% of this rain forest contains within Brazil, 13% includes within Peru and the rest of the amount of this forest includes in Colombia, Venezuela. Ecuador, Bolivia. Guyana, Suriname and France. This forest area represent more than half of the world’s remaining rain forests is considered as the world’s biggest rain forest. It is surrounded by Pacific, and Atlantic Ocean. 

This area is also known as Amazon Basin. It is said that this forest is about 55 million years old. The world’s most land species live in Amazon including insects, plants, fish, birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians. The forest contains about 3 million insect species, 42000 plant species, 1500 birds species, 450 mammals species, 450 amphibians species, 400 reptiles species. It is found that one square kilometer (247 acres) of Amazon rainforest can contain about 90,790 metric tons of living plants. As Amazon is a tropical rain forest, in this area there is a lot of rain each year. The Amazon rain forest contains several species that found only in this forest. Among the largest creatures are the Black Caiman, jaguar, cougar, and anaconda, boa constricts, tapir. In the river areas, electric eels can produce an electric shock that can stun or kill, while piranha are known to bite and injure humans. Various species of poison frogs secrete lipophilic alkaloid toxins through their flesh. There are also numerous parasites and disease vectors. Vampire bats dwell in the rain forest and can spread the rabies virus, Malaria, yellow fever and Dengue fever can also be contracted in the Amazon region. 

This rain forest have unparallelled biodiversity. But it is sorry to say that this forest is losing its area day by day due to deforestation. The main reason for deforestation is human settlement establishing industries in this region. Before 1960 the forest area was extremely restricted from the visitors. It is very bad news for the world that in 1991 to 2000 the forest lost about 415000 to 588000 square kilometers of land. About 75% land deforested since 1970. If this forest is being deforested at this rate it would be very harmful for the world’s climate. It will cause global warming for sure. So step should be taken from now to save this beautiful forest and all should come forward to save this beauty queen. 

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