Rainforest
Rainforests once covered 14% of the earth's land surface; now they cover a mere 6% and experts estimate that the last remaining rainforests could be consumed in less than 40 years.
Rainforests, or rain forests, are forests characterized by high rainfall, with definitions setting minimum normal annual rainfall between 1750 mm and 2000 mm (68 inches to 78 inches).
The largest tropical rainforests exist in the Amazon Basin (the Amazon Rainforest), in Nicaragua (Los Guatuzos, Bosawás and Indio-Maiz), the southern Yucatán Peninsula-El Peten-Belize contiguous area of Central America (including the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve), in much of equatorial Africa from Cameroon to the Democratic Republic of Congo, in much of southeastern Asia from Myanmar to Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, northern and eastern Australia and in the Hawaiian Islands. The majority of tropical rainforest is found within a 20 degree band around the equator.
Outside of the tropics, temperate rainforests can be found in North America including the northwestern coast of the United States, the Pacific coast of Canada, and the interior rainforests of British Columbia's Rocky Mountain Trench east of Prince George. In Europe they are found in coastal portions of Ireland, Scotland and southern Norway, parts of the western Balkans along the Adriatic coast, coastal areas of the eastern Black Sea including Georgia and coastal Turkey. In Asia portions of southern China, Taiwan, much of Japan, Korea, Sakhalin Island and the adjacent coast of Russia.
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