EQUATORIAL EVERGREEN RAINFOREST VS. MOIST FOREST (click here)
There are two major types of wet tropical forests: equatorial evergreen rainforests and moist forests, which includes monsoon forests and montane/cloud forests. Equatorial rainforests, often considered the "real rainforest," are characterized by more than 80 inches (2,000 mm) of rain annually spread evenly throughout the year. These forests have the highest biological diversity and have a well-developed canopy "tier" form of vegetation. Roughly two-thirds of the world's tropical wet forests can be considered the equatorial type. These forests are near the equator where there is very little seasonal variation and the solar day is a constant length all year round. The greatest expanses of equatorial rainforest are found in lowland Amazonia, the Congo Basin, the Southeast Asian islands of Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea.
Tropical moist forests are found at a greater distance from the equator where rainfall and day length vary seasonally. These forests get "only" 50 inches (1,270 mm) of rain annually and are markedly distinguished from equatorial rainforests by a cooler dry season. During this dry season, many trees shed some or even all their leaves, creating a seasonal reduction of canopy cover and allowing more sunlight to reach the forest floor. The increased sunlight reaching the forest floor allows the growth of vigorous understory vegetation not found in lowland equatorial forest. Such moist forest is found in parts of South America, the Caribbean, West Africa, and Southeast Asia, especially Thailand, Burma, Vietnam, and Sri Lanka....
The GDP from birding is significant and can occur immediately.
By Martha Harbison
Three a.m. is horrible. (click here) Almost nothing happens at that hour that you won’t regret later. And yet, at three on a Wednesday morning in June, here I am folding myself into the back of an ancient Toyota Land Cruiser. What, you ask, could possibly inspire me to embark on a bleary pre-dawn odyssey up the flanks of the eastern Andes? To do so voluntarily, even eagerly? The opportunity to see something I could see nowhere else in the world, that’s what—the newest bird known to science, first described in March 2015: the Perijá Tapaculo....
In the United States, (click here) birders number in the tens of millions and spend upwards of $20 billion dollars per year on bird seed, travel, and birding paraphernalia. Average yearly spending by active birders averages between $1,500 and $3,400, with travel being the major expenditure...
