Introduction

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.

Image (modified) :Ville Koistinen (User:Vzb83), CC BY-SA 3.0,
via Wikimedia Commons