Question

Which of the following forests is known as the ‘lungs of the planet Earth’
(a) Taiga forest
(b) Tundra forest
(c) Amazon rainforest
(d) Rainforests of North East India

Answer 1

Hint: The plants are also called as purifiers of Earth. It is so because they purify the air by removing carbon dioxide and giving out oxygen. Plants while photosynthesizing take up carbon dioxide and utilize it to produce food and in turn give out oxygen as a by-product during light reaction. This way forest accounts for the majority of the production of oxygen on planet Earth.

Complete answer:
Amazon rainforest is known as the lungs of the planet Earth. The Amazon rainforest produces nearly 20% of the oxygen on Earth. The Amazon rainforest is situated in South America. This forest majorly is within Brazil (60%), Peru (13%), Colombia(10%), and with some areas in Bolivia, Ecuador, French, Guiana, Guyana, Suriname, and Venezuela. It covers an estimated area of 5.5 million sq km. It is the world’s largest tropical rainforest.

Additional Information:
- Amazon rainforest has the largest biodiversity and is home to 2.5 million insect species, thousands of plants, birds, and mammals. 40,000 plant species, 2,200 fish species, 1,294 species of birds, 427 mammals, 428 amphibians, and 378 reptiles inhabit the large Amazon rainforest.
- The trees here have a canopy structure so the shrubs get little sunlight and thus the atmosphere is highly humid over here. Tropics have provided a relatively constant environment for the plants to evolve with constant sunlight and rainfall, less seasonal variation, and more humidity to evolve.
So, the correct answer is “Amazon rainforest”.

Note: Alexander Von Humboldt gave a relationship between area and number of species discovered, as the area goes on increasing, the number of species discovered increases. Deforestation has accelerated the destruction of forest land thereby causing global warming to increase as carbon dioxide fixation is hampered. So, the forests must be taken care of and not deforested.