The world’s forests provide humanity with some of the most important natural resources needed for survival and comfort. Examples include timber used for construction and furniture, animal products, useful herbs for medical experiments and so on. But beyond those, the forests also serve to moderate the earth’s temperature, checkmating greenhouse emissions and the other adverse effects of climate change. Please see below some of the world’s most enormous and important forests.
AMAZON FOREST
The Amazon Rainforest stretches across nine different countries in South America, representing over half of the world’s total rainforests. Close to seventy per cent of the Amazon Forest is in Brazil and Peru alone. It hosts a wealth of biodiversity and valuable freshwater resources, also serving as home to many of South America’s tribal people with unique Earth Cultures. The Amazon Forest does not only play a crucial role for global biodiversity conservation, but also provides essential ecological services necessary for sustaining life on earth. Unfortunately, heavy logging in the past decades has drastically reduced the original forest area of about 7 million sq km to 5,5 million sq km.
CANADIAN FORESTS
Canadian Forests are said to occupy about 4.2 million square kilometers and cover almost half of the country’s territories. A great variety of forest types stretch from the Pacific to the Atlantic coast and up to the Arctic tree line in the north. The northern boreal forests, the largest contiguous intact forests left on Earth, cover more than one third of the Canada’s land mass. Just like all forests, the Canadian Forests provides essential raw materials and serve to balance the ecological system of the earth. Unfortunately, excessive logging is a major problem. Since Canada is one of the world’s biggest exporters of paper products, it means that several thousand trees are cut down every year for this purpose.
EAST-SIBERIAN TAIGA
This forest stretches across 3.9 million square kilometers between Tundra in the north and temperate mixed forests in the South. The flora and fauna in this forest have to withstand enormous temperature variations between 100° F (40° C) in the summer and -80° F ( -62° C) in the winter.
TONGASS FOREST
Tongass is a temperate rainforest situated in the Southeastern side of Alaska, United States of America. It’s the United States of America’s largest forest stretching up to a size of 68,062 square kilometers or 26278 square miles, i.e. more than the size of Sri Lanka. Made mostly of western Sitka spruce, western hemlock and red cedar, the forest is covered with Western Red Cedar. The Tongass has been divided into 19 designated Wilderness Areas. It houses one of the rarest flora and endangered fauna, because of its remote location. Tongass is truly a pride of the United States of America
SCANDINAVIAN AND RUSSIAN TAIGA
The Scandinavian and Russian Taiga, the largest ecoregion in Europe, occupies about 2,1 million sq km in Finland, Norway, Sweden, and parts of Western Russia and covers almost one third of Europe.
It is of global ecological significance because it locks billions of tons of carbon dioxide and provides excellent nesting habitat for many birds. Fossil fuel exploration, logging, mining, and increasing tourism are heavily threatening this ecoregion. Finland and Scandinavia also tail Canada as the world’s most important exporters of paper-products.
CONGO BASIN FOREST
The Congo Basin Forest is the second largest tropical forest in the whole world and represents a quarter of the world’s remaining tropical forests. It covers more than 1.8 million sq km in six countries. It is home to more than 10,000 plant species, 1,000 species of birds, and hundreds of mammals, including three of the world’s four species of great apes: The Gorilla, Bonobo, and Chimpanzee.
The Congo Basin forest plays a crucial role not only for global biodiversity, but also for the 24 million people living in the area, many of whom depend on the forest for their livelihood.
