FAQs about Deforestation of Forest

7. What is the importance of the Amazon rainforest for South America?

The Amazon is home to the largest tropical rain forest in the world, with an area of almost 7 million km2, in whose territory Spain would fit almost twelve times. It has the Amazon River, the largest and longest on the planet. It contains the greatest biodiversity on Earth, with nearly 80 thousand kinds of trees, 140 thousand species of plants and a great diversity of fauna, which coexist in a unique, complex and fragile ecosystem formed over millions of years.

Hundreds of millions of trees and other plants absorb water and then return it to the atmosphere in huge amounts of water vapor, a mega transpiration that forms clouds, from which the vital liquid returns through rain, which in part falls on the own jungle surface, with which its forests maintain a constant humidity, and in part irrigate distant places such as the Andean Mountain range and the Argentine pampas and influence the precipitation in Bolivia, Paraguay, Argentina, Uruguay and even in the extreme south of Chile.

This gigantic biochemical machinery gives us an idea of its global importance and especially for South America. The fate of the “lung of the world” should concern those of us who inhabit the Earth, since it could disappear in less than half a century, as numerous scientists affirm. (Taken from our Magazine All about the Amazon rainforest)

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