2009612

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Mission2006Team3 - Flora

• Jean Marie Downing Juliana
  Perez
• George Eng Shan
  Riku
• Tanzeer Khan
  Catherine Yao
• Sarah Newman

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Our Teams Goal Time Line

• What is the Amazon Rain Forest?
• September 23- October 7
• What are the Threats?
• September 23 October 7
• Monitoring
• October 7 November 14
• What Can We do?
• October 7 November 14
• After November 14 Preparation Period for Final
  Presentation

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Before Research

• The difference between flora and fauna
• - Flora will cover all plants, fungi, and algae
• - Fauna will be cover animals, monerans, and all
  other protists
• About Tropical Rain Forest
• The definition of tropical rain forest is those
  forests which
• receives more than 2000mm rain per year
• the coldest mean monthly temperature will
  not fall below 18 C.
• About Amazonia
• The world's largest tropical rainforest, spanning
  more than half  of Brazil
• Containing half of present-day rainforest.

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Before Research Division of Layers

• The Emergent Layer
• Contains the tallest trees in the
  rainforest(150200 feet)
• The Canopy
• The primary Layer of the
  rainforest(15150 feet).
• The Understury
• Seldom grow to more than 12
  feet.Difficulty with
• pollinization because of the lack of
  air movement.
• The Forest Floor
• Almost no plants (because of 0-2 light
  100 humidity)Few flowering plants, mosses,
  herbs, and fungi.

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What is the Amazon Rain Forest?
History

• Factors to determine the state of rain forest
• Number of Plant Species
• Vegitation
• by examining the pollen or
  macrofossil of
• representative plants.
• by examining the extinctions and new
  appearances of
• species

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What is the Amazon Rain Forest?
History

• There were three major climate change in history
  of flora.
• Cretaceous extinction event
• Marked reduction in floristic diversity
• Ecocene cooling event
• Less effect on South Africa, which is the main
  reason of the high generic diversity of Palmae in
  South America in present-day.
• The sudden cooling in 2.7 Ma
• Cold period in 2.21.0 Ma
• No desiccation, which enabled the survival of
  very diverse rain forest

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What is the Amazon Rain Forest?
Biological Aspects

• There are several different kinds of rainforests.
  
• Tropical lowland evergreen rainforest
• Tropical semi-evergreen rainforest
• Montane rainforest
• Heath forest
• Peat Swamp forest
• Freshwater swamp forest

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What is the Amazon Rain Forest?
Biological Aspects

• Besides trees, there are many other kinds of
  vegetation
• Especially geared towards finding light
• Lower there live
• On the forest floor there live
• In forest succession

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What are the Threats? Logging

• A monocyclic silvicultural system is used in the
  Amazon rainforest. The results are
• Shifting species composition
• Compacted soil
• Dammed streams
• Vulnerability to fires
• Encourages other activities, e.g. poaching,
  land-clearing for agriculture

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What are the Threats?
Agriculture

• This destroys the delicate soil profile.
  Rainforest cycles the soil used so it is
  self-sustaining. But crops using only some
  portions of the soil intensively, therefore
  damage it. No more new crops can be grown after
  a certain period (5 years), and the forest
  cannot regrow in the ruptured soil. Result
  Rainforest destroyed for more space, and used
  space is left as an infertile, barren wasteland.

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What are the Threats? El Nino/Climate
Change

• Evidence of El-Nino events
• Effects of El-Nino events and relevance to
  current climatic change
• Vulnerability of epiphytes to climate change
• Affect on CAM cycles (CAM-idling)
• Epiphyte role in rainforest and possible
  monitoring tool

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What are the Threats?
Deforestation

• There are two great causes
• One is the demand of wood the governments sell
  logging concessions to raise money for projects,
  to pay international debt, or to develop
  industry.
• The other is the transformation of the forests in
  surfaces dedicated to agriculture and cattle
  ranch.

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What are the Threats?
Deforestation

• Deforestation increases the amount of CO2 and
  other trace gases in the atmosphere.
• The deforestation of tropical rain forests is a
  threat to life worldwide.
• Deforestation may have profound effects on global
  climate and cause the extinction of thousands of
  species annually.
• The future requires solutions based in solving
  the economic crises of countries holding rain
  forests, as well as improvement of the living
  conditions of the poor people often responsible
  for deforestation.

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Future Plan

• We Divide our group into
• Monitoring
• Protection
• We also continue characterizing the Amazon Rain
  Forest (focused on Brazil)

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Contact Info

• Website http//web.mit.edu/12.000/www/m2006/teams
  /r3/flora/index.html
• Mail rain3_at_mit.edu
• Thank you!!!