Mysterious Rainforests
There are three basic types of rainforest in the world and they occur only in areas that get moisture (rain, snow, floodwater, heavy fog or otherwise wet air from oceans or glaciers) throughout the year.
1. Tropical Rainforest
occurs near the equator where there are no real seasons (it is always hot and wet). There are no tropical rainforests in Canada, so they won’t be discussed in this paper.
2. Coastal Temperate Rainforest
occurs primarily along the west coast of North and South America where there are cold and hot seasons. They also occur in other places like Australia, New Zealand, and Norway.
3. Inland Temperate Rainforest
occurs only in central and southern BC (in the Prince George area south to Revelstoke, Nelson and Castlegar). These inland temperate rainforests grow primarily at low elevations and in areas that receive most of their precipitation as snow. When these rainforests occur at high elevations or northern latitudes they are called snow forests.
In BC, rainforests exist because of cold ocean water that rises to the surface from great depths near the coastline. This cold ocean water helps create super-wet clouds. The “jetstream” (a narrow band of swiftly moving air found at very high altitudes) then carries these clouds, and other storms, inland where they crash into the Coast and Rocky Mountains which squeeze all the rain and snow out. Coastal rainforests receive 1,000-5,000 mm of precipitation (rain and snow) per year and inland rainforests receive 1,000-1,500 mm. Trees in the coastal and inland rainforest are mostly redcedar, western hemlock, Douglas-fir, and coastal Sitka spruce at low elevations, and various spruce and fir species at higher elevations. Rainforests have more diversity and abundance of plants and animals (biodiversity) than any other type of forest in the world. Scientists are constantly discovering new kinds of plants and animals in the worlds’ rainforests, and they expect to find millions more species in the future.
