subject: Amazon Rainforest: Visualing the Numbers [print this page] Amazon Rainforest: Visualing the Numbers Amazon Rainforest: Visualing the Numbers
There are many facts relating to the Amazon rainforest, some good, and some quite devastating. But the difficulty with such facts is that all too often the numbers are so vast they may become incomprehensible, and certainly quite difficult to visualise.
By way of example, the Amazon rainforest covers an area of 2.5 million square miles. That's a big number, however, you can't really visualise it can you? All you see is a lot of trees.
To put it somewhat into perspective, Australia is around 2.8 million square miles, so the Amazon rainforest is only a little smaller than the entire Australasian continent.
All the more surprising is the estimation that there are still around fifty Indian tribes dwelling within the Amazon rainforest that have never been discovered and never had contact with the outside world. But it isn't only the big numbers that are impressive - it's the actual contribution of the Amazon rainforest to the survival of the planet that should be understood.
The Amazon rainforest has frequently been referred to as the lungs of the planet, and for good reason. Every day the Amazonian forests generate one fifth of all the oxygen in the atmosphere. Without them we would rapidly start to suffocate. 70% of all plants used in the treatment of cancer are found in the rainforests, and if you lined up each and every plant, animal and insect in the whole world, every other one of them would live in the Amazon rainforest.
It's easy to be amazed by these figures and images, but unfortunately it isn't all good news. Just imagine an acre and a half of rainforest. Not simple is it? So imagine a full size football pitch, which is an acre and a half in size instead.
Now picture that football pitch full of trees, animals and wildlife. Listen to the exotic birds calling to one another, the gentle drip of the heavy raindrops pattering through the leaves onto the rich soil beneath. Imagine that huge area of magnificent and valuable forest.
Now blink your eyes twice. It's gone.
Quite literally an acre and a half of Amazon rainforest is destroyed forever every single second of the day. It's difficult to visualise isn't it?
Perhaps even more difficult to visualise is the irreparable harm it is causing by destroying the most beneficial and diverse natural resources on this planet. We need to do something today, because by this time tomorrow an area of Amazon rainforest more than one and a half times the size of the UK will have disappeared forever.
