Tropical Rainforest Study

768 Words4 Pages

Tropical rainforests are evergreen, hygrophilous in character, at least 30 meters high, but usually much taller, rich in thick-stemmed lianas and in woody as well as herbaceous epiphytes (Schimper 1903). Generally considered as the lungs of earth, these forests are structurally more complex and diverse terrestrial ecosystem on the earth. Vegetation formation of the tropical rain forests is often defined in terms of the structure and the physiognomy of plant components and this varies among three regions of the tropical rainforest occurred namely American or Neotropical rainforest, Eastern tropics (centered on Malay archipelago which is also known as Malesia) and Africa which centered in the Congo Basin (Whitmore 1990). The main determinant …show more content…

Apart from various forest types in Peninsular Malaysia, the following discussion will focus on the lowland dipterocarp forest where study area is located. The lowland dipterocarp forest was named after family Dipterocarpaceae which constitutes prominent elements of this forest and the members of this family, attitudinally are not found in high elevation (>1200 m). Symington (1974) wrote in his book that most of dipterocarps are predominant in lowland rain forest and occur in certain biotic and edaphic formation of limited extent. The altitudinal zonation of this forest ranges from 0 – 300 m and comprises at least three-quarters of the forest in Southeast Asia as well as 85% of the forested area in Malaysia (Manokaran 1995).
The lowland dipterocarp forest is known as most luxuriant of plant communities and amongst the finest dryland forest in the world (Whitmore 1984). The typical characteristics of this forest are having distinctive three layers of trees: emergent trees, main stratum (canopy) and smaller or shrubs trees; boles usually almost cylindrical, buttresses, cauliflory and ramiflory are common, frequently pinnate leaves, big woody climbers and broyophytes are rare (Jacobs 1988, Whitmore

More about Tropical Rainforest Study

Open Document