The forest

Dark and scary... how can anyone want to live here? What are you talking about? Yeah, this whole thing the forest - what's up with that? It's big and dark and you get lost...

What's up with the forest - are you kidding? Well, to start with, it gives shelter to millions of insect and animal species around the world. Forest covers almost a third of the total landmass. No other land-based ecosystem comes close to that. Hm, okay.

I guess the forest is good for something then. But ain't it a bit boring? All the trees look the same? Well. You're quite far North now.

Here, it's snows during most of the year. You're standing in a boreal forest, or taiga. It covers a wide band of land, from Alaska, Canada and northern United States, across Scandinavia, most of Siberia, Kazakhstan and Mongolia, all the way to the northernmost part of Japan. And you're right, it's mostly spruce and pine trees here. Their leaves are hard and pointed: we call them needles.

And they are green all year around, it's an evergreen forest. In some boreal areas you'll also find birch, or larch as well, which are not evergreen. Let's move closer to the equator. Here, it's hot and humid, and the forests are dense and green. Seen from the ground, the sky is almost entirely covered by greenery, all year around.

This, is a tropical rain forest. Tropical rainforests cover only seven per cent of the Earth's land mass, but they're home to more than half of the planet's land based plants and animals. In between the boreal and tropical regions, where the climate is temperate, you find a range of different forests. Temperate forests are often warm and moist during summer, a bit colder in winter. Trees found there include oak, maple, ash, great redwood...

Oh... there are too many to name them all. Many of the trees in temperate forests, drop their leaves during the cold season. They are deciduous. Ew!

What's this crap? It smells so bad! Ah! Don't worry about that. It's just animal droppings.

They're everywhere here. Not just these but also decomposing leaves, dead trees, grasses, seeds and a lot more. Together they form the forest floor. If you look up a little, you will see bushes, shrubs and young trees. They like to grow under the shade of the tall trees.

They're the understorey. Look further up and you will see dense bunches of leaves and branches. That's the top of the forest, the canopy. The canopy takes most of the sunlight and provides shade over the rest of the forest. Hmm...

I get it. But I was wondering, the forest always stays in one place. Doesn't it get boring doing nothing all day? The forest has so many jobs to do. Would this be boring?

The forest turns carbon dioxide from the air into oxygen. So, that we can breathe clean air, and live. The forest regulates the climate around you. Water evaporating from the trees of the forests help to maintain the water cycle on earth. The forest protects you from many natural hazards, floods and storms, by blocking fast flowing water or winds.

The forest provides home to millions of diverse species of plant and animal. And not only that. It's also a source of wood, rubber, latex, medicine, and food. Humans go to the forest in search of peace and recreation: picking berries, meditating, hiking... Okay, I didn't mean to be rude before.

The forest is like, really useful. And important. And a nice place to hang out.