What are the Layers of a Rainforest?
Pop quiz! Which rainforest layers is shown above? Read on to find out if your guess is correct
Ok. So I forgot to post this last year, and now it's finally here. But please ignore that. This post was here the whole time.
I'm pretty proud of myself right now for two reasons. One reason is that I still remember enough about the lecture on the layers of rainforests from my APES class to make this post. The other is that I made a totally amazing blurb to introduce this post. It's interactive, it's pithy, and it practically forces you to read the rest of this article. Speaking of pithiness, I'll actually start explaining how the layers of a rainforest work.
It's like a cake. A four-layered cake. Rainforests are split into the Forest Floor, the Understory, the Canopy, and the Emergent Layer (occasionally, the Emergent Layer gets grouped with the Canopy).
The Forest Floor is exactly like the bottom layer of a cake. It's usually soggy, yet hard at the same time, and no one wants to eat it, or live in it in this case. This layer is about 15-20 feet tall. Hardly any sunlight makes it through the forest floor which is why very few organisms live here, such as bacteria and fungi. Other creatures live here too, like tigers and snakes, but bacteria and fungi are perhaps the most important as they decompose organic matter, playing their part in important cycles such as the nitrogen and carbon cycle.
The Understory tends to be the place where plant species establish their nurseries as the multitude of trees provides shelter from the extreme weather of rainforests. However, these nurseries are really gloomy. The Understory doesn't receive much sunlight either even though it ranges up to 55 feet. There's much more variety of species in this layer; birds, insects, and vines can all be found in this layer. All of these species have adapted to the Understory's humid and dark environment.
Going up! At around 55-100 feet is the Canopy. The Canopy is where it's at. About 90% of all the rainforest's species live in the canopy. Because there is so much sunlight and tree life available at this height, all kinds of organisms from monkeys to frogs can be found here. Trees are espcially abundant. This layer is where the treetops start to come into view. With so many trees come millions of leaves, waiting to soak up the sunlight and power the food web.
Finally, we have the Emergent Layer. This is where the treetops emerge from the canopy and touch the sky (at around 125 feet). These trees are typically the oldest trees because with age comes height. Sadly, this applies to trees and not humans; I've been stuck at the same height for years now. Birds and monkeys can be found here as well as many other different organisms. But just because this layer is at the top doesn't mean it's the best. In a cake, sometimes the top layer just has too much frosting and that just ruins the whole thing. Same thing here, kinda. In the Emergent Layer, the intense exposure to sunlight has caused tree leaves to develop thick waxy coverings to guard against the sudden changes in their surroundings.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rainforest_canopy.jpg
Rainforest Canopy | Near La Fortuna, Costa Rica | Dave Showalter Nature Photography
What is the structure of the tropical rainforest? - Internet Geography
How Rainforests are Formed, and How They are Being Destroyed | Global Forest Watch Content
Layers of the Rainforest | Rainforest Animals | Biology Explorer (bioexplorer.net)
pixels.com
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