TROPICAL FOREST

also called rainforest, also spelled rain forest luxuriant forest, generally composed of broad-leaved trees and often, but not always, found in wet tropical uplands and lowlands around the Equator. Rainforest vegetation along the northern coast of Ecuador. Rainforests are vegetation types dominated by broad-leaved trees that form a dense upper canopy (layer of foliage). The trees may be either evergreen or, in seasonally dry parts of the tropics, deciduous. Rainforests contain a diverse array of vegetation at both tropical and temperate latitudes. Contrary to common thinking, not all rainforests occur in places with high, constant rainfall; for example, in the so-called dry rainforests of northeastern Australia the climate is punctuated by a dry season, which reduces the annual precipitation. Nor are all forests in areas that receive large amounts of rainfall true rainforests; the conifer-dominated forests in the extremely wet coastal areas of the American Pacific Northwest are temperate evergreen forest ecosystems. Therefore, to avoid conveying misleading climatic information, the term rainforest is now preferred over rain forest. This section covers only the richest of rainforeststhe tropical rainforests of the ever-wet tropicsand the related tropical deciduous forests that grow in hot but only seasonally wet climates. Jeremy M.B. Smith Additional reading P.W. Richards, The Tropical Rain Forest (1952), is perhaps the best early account, containing a mine of useful information. Kathlyn Gay, Rainforests of the World: A Reference Handbook (1993), describes the interaction of rainforests and climate. Regional accounts of value are T.C. Whitmore, Tropical Rain Forests of the Far East, 2nd ed. (1984); and Paul Adam, Australian Rainforests (1992). Jeremy M.B. Smith