ABSTRACT
The natural formation which once fully covered the hot and humid tropical areas is the tropical rainforest which is generally found near the equator. Its name (derived from the German tropische Regenwald) reflects a very important climatic parameter – rainfall. Basically tropical rainforest can only be found in a hot and humid location with abundant rainfall. Yamada (1997: 1) believed that ‘this is a world comprising a multi-layered society of plants reaching from the ground to the treetops 70 metres above, a world that hosts a stable society in the midst of the most complex diversity on earth’. Due to human activities and natural disasters, the remaining tropical rainforest covers only 7 per cent of the earth’s dry land, distributed in three major areas (see Figure 3.1). The significant impacts of the tropical rainforest, however, cannot be ignored:
• It is the habitat which supports more than half of all the world’s plant and animal species including large numbers of unknown species (Dirzo and Raven, 2003).
