Tropical Rainforest Ecosystems: Layers and Processes

• Adaptations refer to the ways plants evolve to cope with specific environmental conditions.
• Biodiversity is the variety of organisms within a habitat.
• Biomass is the total mass of plants and animals in an ecosystem.

Canopy

• Situated below the emergents

• This rainforest layer receives 70% of the sunlight

• This rainforest layer receives 80% of the rainfall

• A continuous blanket of leaves ranging in height from 20 to 30m

• Convectional rainfall occurs as the heat of the sun warms water on the land's surface, causing evaporation and the subsequent cooling and condensation to form precipitation.

• Decomposers are organisms like bacteria that break down plant and animal material.

• Deforestation refers to the removal of trees.

• An ecosystem includes the living and non-living components of an environment and their interrelationships.

• Emergents constitute the tallest trees in a rainforest, reaching heights of up to 60m.

• Fall out is when trees or leaves that fall to the forest floor become litter.

• The ground layer/forest floor receives minimal sunlight.

• The ground layer/forest floor is dark and often covered in fallen leaves.

• Intervening obstacles are factors hindering migration, such as physical distance, mountain ranges, travel costs, or visa requirements.

• The Kayapo are Indigenous people in Brazil inhabiting a vast area across the states of Pará and Mato Grosso, south of the Amazon and along the Xingu River and its tributaries.

• Leaching is when Rainwater dissolves and removes nutrients from the soil by washing it out.

• Litter is dead plant material found on the forest floor.

• Nutrient cycling is the recycling of nutrients between living organisms and the environment.

• Push factors are negative aspects that make people want to move away from a place.

• Pull factors are positive aspects that attract people to a specific place.

• Runoff happens when rainwater runs along the ground and removes nutrients from the litter.

• Shifting cultivation is a subsistence farming method involving clearing a plot of land, harvesting it temporarily, abandoning it, and allowing it to regenerate over extended periods.

• The shrub layer is the lowest layer of the rainforest, where only small trees and shrubs that have adapted to living in the shade can survive, and is less than 5m tall.

• Sustainability is development that focuses on meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

• Transpiration refers to the exhalation of water vapour through the stomata of a plant.

• The under-canopy rainforest layer consists of trees growing up to 10 to 20m.