The Amazon Rainforest
The Amazon Rainforest is the world’s greatest natural resource. It has been estimated that this forest has existed for over fifty-five million years. It has a total area of two and a half million square miles and is located in the Amazon River basin along the equator. This rainforest makes up for more than half of the world’s remaining rainforests. The rainforest is bordered by nine different countries which are Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana. The region consists of a variety of ecosystems from natural savanna to swamps. Animals, plants, and humans all are present inside of the rainforest. This rainforest is responsible for many things and events that go on in the world. It affects people around the world socially, politically, and environmentally. Not only does this rainforest get explored, it also gets destroyed by human beings ("The Amazon Rainforest", 1999).
Inhabitants
The Amazon
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Deforestation is the process of cutting, clearing, and removing parts of a rainforest and turning it into less bio-diverse ecosystems such as cropland or plantations. Agriculture is the biggest lead on deforestation. Farmers will use the slash-and-burn method to clear out space for their own crops or for grazing livestock. Loggers also cut down trees, which provides for the world’s wood and paper. Over half of the work is done illegally when the loggers build roads to get access to more of the forest. Both types of jobs leads to further deforestation. It is estimated that every second over two and a half acres of the rainforest is torn down. To this day over eighteen percent of the Amazon rainforest has been cleared, which is about the size of France. Sometimes there is also unintentional deforestation that is caused by wildfires which prevents the growth of young trees ("Amazon Destruction",