The rainforest is an amazing natural habitat. It is a place
of discovery and growth. Tropical rainforests around the world nurture and feed
over half of the world’s plants and animals. Over ¼ of all of the natural
medicines were found in rainforests. Rainforests
are located around the world, but generally are located around the equator,
between Tropic of Capricorn and the Tropic of Cancer. Why is that, you ask?
Well, the temperature around the equator is much higher than other places farther
from the equator. Those higher temperatures then cause accelerated
evaporation that makes the water that the clouds are holding to let down
sooner than clouds in other places. Places like central and South America,
Africa, India, South East Asia, parts of Indonesia and Australia all have rainforests.
Rainforests
consist of 4 layers that all have their own systems.
Layer 1: The forest floor; where most of the plants of the
rainforest live and some small animals like slugs and some kinds of worms.
Also, this layer receives about 2% of the sunlight. This is mostly the layer of
dirt and decaying.
Layer 2: The
Understory layer; This layer only gets 2-15 percent of the sunlight, so it's not a very light place. In this layer under 10% of the animals live. This layer is pretty open
and contains a lot of rivers, streams and many popular garden plants like
impatiens and begonias.
Layer 3: The canopy layer; This layer holds almost all of
the rainforest birds and monkeys. The trees in this layer form a tight bundle of
canopy, 60-90 feet above the ground. It also contains 90% of all of the animals
in the rainforests.
Layer 4: The Emergent layer; The Emergent layer is a small
layer of huge trees that must survive in hot and dry air and strong winds. This top layer is home to only a few animals
including the Crowned Eagle, the King Columbus monkey and the large flying fox.
About 40 km from San Juan, Puerto Rico, there is a rainforest
called El Yunque. It is the smallest national forest and the
only tropical rain forest located in the United States. This rainforest is
about 29,000 acres around and contains many species of plants and animals. A long
time ago Puerto Rico was formed from an underground volcano. And you might ask,
if it used to be an underground volcano, then how are there any animals or
plants on this island? Well, there are many native animals on the island including
birds, reptiles,and amphibians . When you visit Puerto Rico, one thing that you
won’t miss is the coqui frog
that likes to live in dark, damp places.
They make a “ko-KEE” noise that gives them their name. The only native mammals
to Puerto Rico are 10 species of bats that came to the island by flying. Any
other species was either brought over by humans and escaped or flew across the
ocean from somewhere else. Also, any plants that now are on the island came by
wind carrying their seeds to the island where they then started to grow and
reproduce other plants of their kind. On the island there
are about 240 native tree species, 26 of which are located only in El
Yunque rainforest.
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| This is some of the mountain peaks that make up El Yunque national forest. It rains almost every day here. |
Last weekend we visited El Yunque National Rainforest in
Puerto Rico. The first thing we did after the beautiful drive was hike. The
trail was named the La Coca Trail and was supposed to lead to a beautiful
waterfall.
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| The forest had a lot of palm trees in it. |
The trail started with a big decline that snaked around bends. The
trail was scattered with bamboo and other debris and needed some maintenance –
it was muddy, slippery, wet, and steep.
Since it’s a rain forest, you would have to maintain the trail every day
to have it be in good shape. We soon came to a small river crossing that was
about 10 feet across and had fairly low water.
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| This is one of the interesting plants that we saw in the rainforest. |
After crossing the stream we
came to a patch where it had most likely been washed out the day before, so it
was muddy and slippery. We had to move out of the way of the trail and get out
of the mud. We soon came to a good resting spot and me and my dad went to scope
out some more of the trail so that we could decide if the juice was really
worth the squeeze. We voted to turn around.
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| This is the bamboo that grows near the top of the La Coca trail. It was huge, and some of it was falling down. |
After eating lunch and climbing a
tower to an amazing view we decided to test our luck on a popular trail that
was shorter and paved and was supposed to lead to a section of the same
waterfall.
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| Our view from the top of the tower. We can see all the way to the ocean, and where we live is around the corner to the left of the mountain. |
The hike was not long and was really interesting and had informative
signs along the way. A few trees that we noticed were the Ausubo tree and the
Tobonuco tree. We learned that the bats guano fertilizes the soil and carries
seeds to plant new trees in the rainforest.
The waterfall was amazingly crowded, probably because it was the perfect
day to swim in the rainforest. We spent a good half an hour playing at the waterfall
before hiking back and ending our day.
Recently, human activity has been destroying tropical
rainforests around the world. People have been doing thing such as burning land
in rainforests to make space for cattle and logging the sacred trees in rainforests.
Over the years, scientists estimate that slash and burn farming as it is known
is 50% of rainforest destruction.
Visiting El Yunque National Forest was a great experience that I would
recommend to anybody visiting Puerto Rico.
Our hike gave me an appreciation for all the animals and plants that
make up this important ecosystem.
References
USFS interpretive plaques along the “La Mina Falls” trail
Hi James. Cool that you went to the Rainforest.
ReplyDeleteHi James we also learned about the Taino people in school! :)
ReplyDeletehope you are having a fun time from Nick