Tropical Forest

The dense green is penetrated only by the myriad of sounds spit out by the thousands of different creatures that call this place not only home, but cradle of creation. The sun begins to slowly descend, and even more strange animals awaken as others turn in for the night. You can't help but be in awe of this overwhelming amount of life, seeming to simply linger and lounge about as if nothing out of the ordinary was occurring. Lowland equatorial evergreen rain forests, commonly known as tropical rainforests, are forests which receive high rainfall (more than 2000 mm, or 80 inches, annually) throughout the year. These forests occur in a belt around the equator, with the largest areas in the Amazon basin of South America, the Congo basin of central Africa, Indonesia, and New Guinea. Montane rain forests, some of which are known as cloud forests, are found in cooler-climate mountainous areas. About half of the world's tropical rainforests are in the South American countries of Brazil and Peru. Rainforests now cover less than 6% of Earth's land surface. Scientists estimate that more than half of all the world's plant and animal species live in tropical rain forests. The tropics include all the areas on the Earth where the Sun reaches a point directly overhead at least once during the solar year. About 40 percent of the world's human population lives within the tropical zone (by 2008 statistics), and by 2060, 60% of the human population will be in the tropics, owing to high birth rates and migration.