Tropical Rainforests

What Tropical Rainforests covers

Tropical Rainforests is examined in Paper 1, Living with the physical environment. It covers rainforest characteristics, interdependence and adaptations, rainforest biodiversity, deforestation: rates, causes and impacts and the value of rainforests and how they are managed sustainably.

The 5 subtopics

Each one has its own page.

• Rainforest characteristics, interdependence and adaptationsWhere tropical rainforests are, their hot wet climate and vegetation layers, thin infertile soils, how the forest makes its own rain, the dependence of indigenous people, and adaptations such as drip tips, buttress roots and climbing animals.Open →
• Rainforest biodiversityWhy rainforests hold the greatest biodiversity on land, layered niches and endemic species, their value to medicine, and the threats from specialisation, habitat fragmentation, hunting, the wildlife trade and extinction.Open →
• Deforestation: rates, causes and impactsHow deforestation rates are measured and change, subsistence and commercial farming, logging, roads, mining, energy development, settlement and population growth as causes, and economic development, soil erosion and climate change as impacts.Open →
• Deforestation in the AmazonChanging deforestation rates in the Brazilian Amazon, cattle ranching, soya, logging, the Trans-Amazonian Highway, the Carajás mine and the Belo Monte dam as causes, and the economic gains, soil erosion and carbon release that follow.Open →
• The value of rainforests and how they are managed sustainablyThe value of rainforests to local people, the world's climate and water, and management through selective logging, replanting, conservation, education, ecotourism, debt reduction and hardwood agreements.Open →

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Take Tropical Rainforests further

The same content, four other ways.

Commonly confused

Pairs that lose marks when they are blurred together.

• Subsistence farming vs Commercial farming

  Subsistence farming: growing to feed the farmer's own family on small cleared plots. Commercial farming: growing crops or raising cattle for sale at a profit on very large fields.

• Selective logging vs Replanting

  Selective logging: felling only chosen trees and leaving the rest standing. Replanting: putting in enough new trees of the same species to replace those taken.

• Ecotourism vs Conservation

  Ecotourism: small-scale visiting that does little damage and puts money into the local community. Conservation: setting land aside as a park or reserve where felling and hunting are banned.

Questions from this topic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   Where in the world are tropical rainforests found?

   Model answer

   In a belt either side of the equator, roughly between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn.

2. 2

   Describe the climate of a tropical rainforest.

   Model answer

   It is hot and wet throughout the year, with rain falling in every month and no real dry season, and temperature changing very little between seasons.

3. 3

   Name the four vegetation layers of a rainforest, working upwards from the ground.

   Model answer

   The forest floor, the shrub or under-canopy layer, the canopy, and the emergent layer of the tallest trees.

4. 4

   Why is the soil beneath a rainforest thin and infertile even though the vegetation above it is dense?

   Model answer

   The heavy rain leaches nutrients downwards out of reach of roots, and most of the nutrients are held in the living vegetation and recycled straight back from fallen leaves rather than stored in the soil.

5. 5

   How does the forest help to create its own rainfall?

   Model answer

   Trees release large volumes of water vapour by transpiration, which rises and condenses to give heavy convectional downpours, so removing the trees reduces the rain that falls.

6. 6

   Explain why clearing an area of rainforest quickly leaves the land unable to support the same vegetation.

   Model answer

   Because the nutrient store was in the trees themselves, once they are gone the rain washes the little that remains out of the exposed soil, so the fertility that fed the forest disappears with it.

What is inside Levo

Six ways to work the same material.

Tropical Rainforests revision questions

What does Tropical Rainforests cover in AQA GCSE Geography?

5 subtopics: rainforest characteristics, interdependence and adaptations, rainforest biodiversity, deforestation: rates, causes and impacts, deforestation in the amazon and the value of rainforests and how they are managed sustainably. Each one has its own page with questions and model answers.

How is Tropical Rainforests organised?

By the AQA 8035 specification, subtopic by subtopic, so it matches the order you are taught it in.