Rainforests are forest ecosystems with high levels of rainfall, an enclosed canopy and high species diversity.
Tropical rainforests may seem like the most well-known type, they are found all over the world, even in regions
such as: Canada, the United States and the former Soviet Union. Tropical rainforests typically occur in the
equatorial zone between the Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn, latitudes that have warm temperatures
and relatively constant year-round sunlight. Tropical rainforests merge into other types of forest depending
on the altitude, latitude, and various soil, flooding, and climate conditions. These forest types form a mosaic
of vegetation types which contribute to the incredible diversity of the tropics.
The bulk of the world's tropical rainforest occurs in the Amazon Basin in South America. The Congo
Basin and Southeast Asia, respectively, have the second and third largest areas of tropical rainforest.
Rainforests also exist on some the Caribbean islands, in Central America, in India, on scattered islands in
the South Pacific, in Madagascar, in West and East Africa outside the Congo Basin, in Central America and
Mexico, and in parts of South America outside the Amazon. Brazil has the largest extent of rainforest of
any country on Earth.
Rainforests provide important ecological services, including storing hundreds of billions of tons
of carbon, buffering against flood and drought, stabilizing soils, influencing rainfall patterns, and
providing a home to wildlife and indigenous people. Rainforests are also the source of many useful products
upon which local communities depend.
While rainforests are critically important to humanity, they are rapidly being destroyed by human
activities. The biggest cause of deforestation is conversion of forest land for agriculture. In the past
subsistence agriculture was the primary driver of rainforest conversion, but today industrial agriculture �
especially monoculture and livestock production � is the dominant driver of rainforest loss worldwide.
Logging is the biggest cause of forest degradation and usually proceeds deforestation for agriculture.
