Amazon (12)


Source: WTL photograph© on site in the Amazon River Basin.
Comments: Here is a view of the giant trunk of the same tree we just saw in #11. The online World Wildlife Fund (WWF Global) says this about the kapok tree: "Just try to find two trees of the same species within a few minutes in the Amazon rainforest, and the term ‘massive biodiversity’ will take a new meaning: you keep walking across different species. Just the western part of the Amazon River Basin has the highest diversity of trees in the world. Tropical rainforests set records in biodiversity: anywhere between 40 to 100 species of tree can be found in a 1-hectare plot of land. Take the Cocha Cashu Biological Station in the Amazon floodplain forests of Peru, as an example. There, at least 1,856 species of higher plants have been discovered. The Amazon is home to as many as 80,000 plant species from which more than 40,000 species play a critical role in regulating the global climate and sustaining the local water cycle.3 But the richness of species is one thing, and abundance another. While there may be many species in tropical rainforests, these often exist in low numbers over large areas. Amazon plants and trees play critical roles in regulating the global climate and sustaining the local water cycle. The forests they form are home to the huge variety of animals found in the Amazon"
Internal parallel Latin American reference: See: => Tikal page #5 and the embedded page #5b.