Amazon forest
The Amazon forest is located in South America, and occupies a large area of Brazil, and some of its neighboring countries such as Peru, Venezuela, Guyana, and Ecuador. It extends over a vast area of approximately 550 million hectares. The Amazon forest occupies great importance on the surface of the Earth, as it is considered the lung on which it depends. Earth to obtain oxygen and breathe, as the Amazon forest purifies the atmosphere from carbon dioxide and converts it into oxygen, thereby providing approximately 20% of the oxygen available in the atmosphere.
Natural life in the Amazon jungle
The Amazon forest is classified as one of the pristine forests in the world, which existed on Earth about 500 million years ago, which helped in the occurrence of a great diversity of natural life in it. The most important aspects of life in it are as follows:
- The general level of air temperature in the Amazon forest is equivalent to 27 degrees, while the annual rainfall level fluctuates between 130 cm to 440 cm, because it is classified as a rainforest.
- In the Amazon forest, there are approximately half of the species of living organisms present on the surface of the Earth, which are estimated at ten million different species of plants and animals, as it includes approximately 750 species of trees, while tall plants number up to 1500 different species.
- The Amazon forest contains one-fifth of the Earth's fresh water sources.
- The Amazon forest contains thirty million diverse species of insects.
- Amazon rivers contain 3 known species of fish.
Damage to the Amazon forest
The Amazon forest has not been spared from unjust human violations of nature and forests, as its distinguished location on the South American continent and the fertility of life in it helped attract many people who aspire to it, without any interest on their part towards preserving the natural cycle of life in it, and the damages it has been exposed to can be limited to the following:
Read also:The importance of air for living organisms- Uprooting trees, uprooting plants, and bulldozing soil with the aim of creating highways linking the surrounding areas, in addition to creating residential areas on their outskirts.
- Growing many types of narcotics there, in addition to converting some of its areas into laboratories specialized in manufacturing narcotics and transporting them to other countries.
- Loggers focus on uprooting certain types of trees and not others, due to the high value of their wood, which threatens their presence in the forest, the most important of which is mahogany trees.
- The drought that struck the Amazon forest four decades ago contributed to the drying up of many of its rivers and the death of huge numbers of fish in them.
