India is located in Southern Asia between Burma
and Pakistan. In India you can find rain forests in the northeastern
Indian state of Assam. There are also rain forests in the Andaman
and Nicobar Islands and the Western Ghats. In the Himalayan foothills (the
Tinsukia and Dibrugarh districts) there are smaller rain forests.
DID YOU KNOW?
There are two kinds of forests: tropical
and temperate. A temperate forest has less land than a tropical
forest. You can find temperate forests along the Pacific coast
of the United States of America and Canada, New Zealand, Tasmania,
Norway, Ireland, Scotland and Chile.
A tropical rainforest is a forest where it
is wet and warm all year round. Tropical rain forests are located near the
equator and the tropic of cancer.
India has a tropical
rain forest. It is always hot, humid and sticky. The temperature is
between 70 degrees and 90 degrees Farenheit.
LAYERS OF A TROPICAL RAIN FOREST:
There are four major layers in a tropical rain
forest: 1. FOREST FLOOR
- It is dark on this layer because the trees are blocking the sunlight.
You find lots of leaves on the floor but not a lot of soil.
Plants grow because the leaves that fall from trees decompose and
the nutrients from the leaves help the plants to grow. Many animals
live on the forest floor. Anteaters, peccaries, ants, spiders, snails,
snakes, lizards, poison dart frogs, leopards, tigers and elephants are
some of the animals that live on this layer.
2. UNDERSTORY
- This layer is above the forest floor. It doesn't get a lot
of light either because the trees above are blocking the light.
Plants have to grow 12 feet to reach sunlight! The red-eyed
tree frog, owls, bats, monkeys, leopards and apes are some of the animals
that live in this layer. Insects live here too. DID YOU KNOW? The
leaves in the understory are twice the size as other leaves in the rain
forest. You can use them as an umbrella!
3. CANOPY - The canopy has
the tallest trees. They form a roof over the forest floor. If
you were looking down on the rain forest, it would look like a green
ocean. More animals live in this layer than in any other part of the
rain forest. Some animals spend their whole lives in the canopy and
never touch the ground!
4. EMERGENT - In the emergent layer you are
above all of the trees. |