short essay on tropical forest

Tropical Rain Forest Argumentative Essay

Introduction.

Ecology is a branch of biology that deals with the study of living things and how they relate among themselves and to the environment. An ecosystem is a natural unit that consists of biotic and abiotic factors. Biotic factors refer to biological aspects of the environment while abiotic factors refer to the physical environmental factors. This paper seeks to discuss the tropical rain forest.

The content of the paper will include: biodiversity, food chain and endangered species in the tropical rain forest and the various levels of the food chain. The content will also include the threats facing the tropical rain forest, the impacts of the threats to the ecosystem and the possible solutions to the threats and the impacts of these solutions.

The Tropical Rain Forest

The tropical rain forest is among the types of ecosystems exhibited in ecology. Other types of ecosystems include: “aquatic, arid, deciduous forests, grasslands and tundra ecosystems” (COTF 1).

The tropical rain forest is a hot and moist ecosystem that is found along the equator. This ecosystem is found in parts of Africa, South America and parts of Asia. Rainfall in this ecosystem is continuous throughout the year and ranges from 60 to 160 inches of rain gauge measurements.

The environment which consists of hot and moist conditions is supportive to a large number of plants and animals. The conditions form an optimum environment for bacteria inhabitation. The soil of the ecosystem is however not very fertile because nutrients are drained away by the rain water (COTF 1).

According to Waring and Running, tropical rainforest is inhabited by a variety of plants and animals. It has been estimated that the ecosystem is inhabited by a record of more than four hundred and seventy species of plants per hectare around the equator. There is also a variety of invertebrate species as well as micro organisms.

Also present in the tropical rainforest are the herbivores which are mainly known to feed on plant leaves and grass (Waring and Running 184). The ecosystem is also inhabited by a number of insects and birds, some of which can fly while others just climb trees. Other birds like the parrots can climb as well as fly (Darwin 1).

Food chain is a map representation showing what given species of an ecosystem feed on. It is a representation of energy flow among the biotic factors in the system.

Every element in the ecosystem is therefore significant as the energy flow passes through it. This implies that given species of plants and animals derive food from other species. The energy flow could mean death of members of a given species or just a mere consumption of a part of a member of the given species. The energy flow however aids the survival of some species in the ecosystem.

At the top of the food chain are the primary producers. This level consists of green plants which utilizes sunlight to synthesize their food. Bellow the green plants are the class of primary consumers which consists of herbivores. The herbivores feed on the plants’ leaves. After the primary consumers there is the level known as secondary consumers. This level consists of carnivores which feed on the herbivores.

The secondary consumers are food providers to the tertiary consumers. The last level of the food chain is the class of decomposers which degenerate decaying matter to the form that can be absorbed by plants as nutrients. This completes the chain cycle which then begin again with the plants (Aloian and Kalman 8)

The Endangered Species

A species is said to be endangered if its existence is threatened by either human actions or by a natural cause. The study of food chain reveals that members of the ecosystem feed on one another in a given direction. This has the effect of relatively reducing the number of the species. Feldhamer claimed that almost 45 percent of the global tropical rain forest has been destroyed over time. This includes alarming destructions of up to 85% in Ivory Coast.

Forest destruction occurs due to a number of reasons. The major reason for the deforestation in tropical rainforests in Africa and parts of America is the expansion of agricultural land. The process often include clearing and burning of the vegetation which as a result kills the soil microorganisms whose role of decomposing matter provides nutrients for plants. There are however many other species which are endangered as their habitat is either destroyed or disturbed.

The extent to which the species are endangered will vary from one rainforest to another as well as from one point to another within a rainforest depending on the factors that affects the lives of the different species in the tropical ecosystems. The forest itself, being a sole primary producer for the ecosystem and its susceptibility to destruction by human, makes it a critically endangered.

Human activities together with the global climate change have resulted in drastic reduction of the forest cover and even extinction of some plants species (Feldhamer, 531; Endangered 1). It has been argued that only 14% out of the original tropical forest is currently in existence. It can therefore be concluded that the forest is in itself the most endangered as it is faced with both natural and adverse human destruction (Species 1).

Factors Threatening the Tropical Ecosystem, Their Impacts And Possible Solutions

Threats facing the tropical rain forests include the clearance of the forests by humans to create agricultural land and to use trees as industrial raw materials. Another threat is the change in climate. Deforestation has a great impact on the ecosystem as it destroys part of the organisms in the system thus causing chain gaps in the food webs (Marietta n.d.).

Lindsey explained that deforestation can be a source of conflict between the people living in or depending on the forest and the ones causing deforestation. In attempting to solve such conflicts government agencies have established policies to create a balance among all the dependants of the forests. Environmental impacts of deforestation are the effects on biodiversity and climate change.

Again policies are put in place to preserve the habitats and the environment in general. An example is reduced agricultural productivity due to low rainfall and degraded soil. A possible solution would be to restore the forests (Lindsey, 2007).

The tropical rainforest is the richest ecosystem in terms of number of species. There is interdependence among the species with some feeding on others. This together with human activities has endangered some species.

The greatest threat is seen to be on plants. Plants being the primary producers in the ecosystem are likely to bring down the whole ecosystem if they are tampered with. More action is still needed to preserve the tropical rainforest and other ecosystems.

Works Cited

Aloian, Molly and Kalman, Ben. Rainforest Food Chains . New York, NY: Crabtree Publishing Company, 2006. Print.

COTF . Tropical rainforest . 2004. Web.

Darwin. Tropical rain forest . Darwin Museum, 1999. Web.

Endangered Species . Forest,Tropical forests . Endaangered Species, n.d. Web.

Feldhamer, Armen. Mammalogy: adaptation, diversity, ecology. New York, NY: JHU Press, 2007. Print.

Lindsey, Ryan. Tropical deforestation. Earth Observatory, 2007. Web.

Marietta. The Tropical Rain Forest . n.d. Web.

Waring, Richard and Running, Sirm. Forest ecosystems: analysis at multiple scales. London, UK :Elsevier, 2007. Print.

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IvyPanda. (2023, November 1). Tropical Rain Forest. https://ivypanda.com/essays/tropical-rain-forest/

"Tropical Rain Forest." IvyPanda , 1 Nov. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/tropical-rain-forest/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'Tropical Rain Forest'. 1 November.

IvyPanda . 2023. "Tropical Rain Forest." November 1, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/tropical-rain-forest/.

1. IvyPanda . "Tropical Rain Forest." November 1, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/tropical-rain-forest/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Tropical Rain Forest." November 1, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/tropical-rain-forest/.

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The Importance of Tropical Forests: Why We Should Conserve Them and How They Affect the Rest of the World

Image Credit:Jami Dwyer

Tropical forest constitutes the most diverse and complex biomes on Earth. Since Humboldt to the present day, the ecology of these biomes has been captivating and challenging scientists. The speciality of the ecology of these biomes reaches further than pure natural history; they are of key importance to the world: from timber, to medicine, to regulating the global climate. Now many people consider these unique biomes to be at a crossroads. With increased deforestation and fragmentation of tropical forests in the shadow of global warming, there has never been a more pressing time to understand the ecology of these vital biomes than the present day. This highlights what is particularly special about the ecology of tropical biomes: we know very little about it. To conserve these biomes effectively and sustainably we must understand their ecological functions and systems.

Diversity, and complexity

In the tropics there is high annual rainfall, and relatively stable average temperature, with only two seasons: wet and dry. The high annual rainfall results in leaching of the soils causing nutrient poor soils. Although the tropics share these similar climate and soil conditions, there are many different types of tropical forests: from dry to rain, and from mangrove to eucalyptus. They are divided along gradients of temperature, humidity, altitude, and flooding; as well as being divided by their evolutionary history, with different species playing similar roles in different forest types, for example new world monkeys compared to old. From nutrient poor soils has arisen the most productive, diverse, and complex terrestrial ecosystems on Earth.

As well as a large diversity of forest types, the biodiversity within the forests is the highest on Earth, harbouring around 50% of the world species. One of the most noticeably biodiverse groups in the forest are invertebrates, particularly insects. Nigel Stork fogged ten trees of just five different species with insecticide, which brought down around 2800 different species of arthropod, and, what was truly amazing, was that most of these species were represented by a single individual! Now, with Bornean forest having as many as 300 tree species per hectare, and then considering the biodiversity of arthropods in the leaf litter, or in epiphytes, one starts to comprehend how special these ecosystems are. In fact, a study in 2004 investigated how much of the canopy biodiversity was living among large epiphytes. From just five basket ferns they collected around 250,000 individual arthropods, and they concluded that epiphytes contain about as much animal life as does the canopy above it, doubling the estimate of invertebrate biomass in the rainforest canopy from just five plants. This is also just invertebrate biodiversity; the plant diversity is equally staggering, with orchids, ferns, bromeliads, lianas, mosses, liverworts, algae, and lichen covering the branches of trees, and on top of that epiphytes growing on epiphytes, creating a fractal image of plant life.  

Tropical forests are not just a random combination of organisms, but a complex ecological web of interactions between species. As written in ‘On the Origin of Species’ (1859): ‘When we look at the plants and bushes clothing an entangled bank, we are tempted to attribute their proportional numbers and kinds to what we call chance. But how false a view this is!’. I think this complexity is best shown by the forest’s sensitivities. The Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project shows that when the forests become fragmented, the entire ecological community changes. For example, in a one-hectare fragment after 2 years of isolation, the number of bird species declined by 60%. The high complexity means changes in the population sizes and community compositions can trigger a chain reaction, with synergistic effects, that ripples through the forest, impacting many other species.

Practising ecology in tropical forests

In my opinion, what is particularly special about the ecology in tropical forests, is that we are still in the very early stages of understanding this field: ‘The science of biodiversity is not much farther along than medicine was in the Middle Ages. We are still at the stage, as it were, of cutting open bodies to find out what organs are inside’ –   The Unified Neutral Theory of Biodiversity and Biogeography (2001). Tropical forest ecology was for a long time focused on describing specific patterns and processes, but Hubbell’s Neutral Theory disrupted this into carefully questioning many of its most fundamental assumptions.  

Along with this theoretical turning point in tropical forest ecology, practical ones have come with modern technology. One of the reasons why we know relatively little about tropical forest ecology is because tropical forests present many challenges to ecologists, particularly how to representatively survey the most biodiverse area on Earth, which happens to be up to 30m high in the canopy. This challenge has produced some creative solutions: from training macaques to collect specimens; to mini zeppelins; to construction cranes. Now with modern technology it is becoming safer and easier to survey these areas, though it is still by no means easy. As with deep sea and space exploration, much of tropical forest ecology is still in the dark, which makes it very exciting.

The changing ecology

Now our lack of understanding and knowledge is more important than ever, because, as we run into the Anthropocene, the ecology of tropical forests is changing. This reveals another speciality of tropical forest ecology: how to sustainably conserve the most exploited, complex, least understood, and important terrestrial environment on Earth, while allowing for development of communities who live in/rely on tropical forests.

Tropical forests are not just changing due to deforestation for timber and agricultural land, but also due to selective extractions of plants, poaching, biological invasion, fragmentation, and climate change. These changes are particularly hard to combat because several threats are likely to interact synergistically with one another, as well as precipitating indirect and direct effects through poorly understood interaction webs.

It is important to conserve tropical forests not just because they support around 50% of described species, and possibly an even larger number of undescribed species, but because they also play a disproportionate role in global carbon and energy cycles. In the early 2000s forests in 75 tropical counties studied contained 247 billion tons of carbon (NASA). This means that the deforestation of tropical forests is a significant contributor to carbon emissions. Another important reason for their conservation is that tropical forest provides a livelihood for millions of people.

There is some debate about the extent to which tropical forests are being negatively affected by climate change, but if anything, this just highlights the need for more knowledge on tropical forest ecology. It is crucial to understand the ecological effects of this anthropogenic change if we want to effectively conserve tropical forests.

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• 04 April 2024

Tropical-forest destruction has slowed — but is still too high

• Carissa Wong

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Rainforest in the Brazilian Amazon burns. Credit: Ricardo Funari/Brazil Photos/LightRocket via Getty

Loss of pristine tropical forests slowed last year — but the world is still falling far short of a global goal to end deforestation by 2030. The findings, from an analysis of satellite data released this week , highlight the need to improve conservation of tropical forests to protect biodiversity and slow climate change.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-00989-7

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Forest Essay for Students and Children

500+ words essay on forest.

Forests are an intricate ecosystem on earth which contains trees , shrubs, grasses and more. The constituents of forests which are trees and plants form a major part of the forests. Furthermore, they create a healthy environment so that various species of animals can breed and live there happily. Therefore, we see how forests are a habitat for a plethora of wild animals and birds. In addition to being of use to wildlife, forests benefit mankind greatly and hold immense significance.

Importance of Forests

Forests cover a significant area of the earth. They are a great natural asset to any region and hold immense value. For instance, forests fulfill all our needs of timber, fuel, fodder, bamboos and more. They also give us a variety of products that hold great commercial as well as industrial value.

In addition, forests give us a large number of raw materials for various products like paper, rayon, gums, medicinal drugs and more. Other than that, forests are also a major source of employment for a significant population . For example, people are involved in their protection, harvesting , regeneration, raw material processing and more.

Moreover, forests are largely responsible for preserving the physical features of our planet. They monitor soil erosion and prevent it from happening. Further, they alleviate floods by making the streams flow continually. This, in turn, helps our agriculture to a great extent.

Most importantly, forests are a habitat for wildlife. They provide them with shelter and food. Thus, it is quite important to protect forests and furthermore enhance the forest cover for a greener and sustainable future.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Improving Forest Cover

When we talk about forest cover, we do not merely refer to planting new trees but also improving the degraded forest land. To meet the fulfilments of the demand for timber and non-timber forests, we need to have a comprehensive approach to enhance the forest cover.

Forests are being wiped out and trees are being cut down at a rapid rate. To meet the other needs of humans, we are losing sight of the bigger picture. People need to take steps to improve the forest cover rather than decrease it. The government must regulate the cutting down of trees. We must adopt roper methods which ensure the regrowth of trees. This way, we will be able to fulfill both the needs.

Furthermore, we must control forest fires. We must adopt the latest techniques which will help in fire fighting more efficiently. This will prevent further loss of trees and animals. Most importantly, afforestation plus reforestation must be practiced. The people and government must plant new trees in place of the one cut down. Moreover, they must plant trees in new areas to develop a forest.

In short, forests are a great blessing of nature. Various types of forests are home to a thousand animals and also means of livelihood for numerous people. We must recognize the importance of forests and take proper measures to tackle the issue of deforestation.

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• v.377(1849); April 25, 2022

Tropical forests in the deep human past

Eleanor m. l. scerri.

1 Pan-African Evolution Research Group, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Kahlaische Strasse 10, 07745, Jena, Germany

3 Department of Classics and Archaeology, University of Malta, Msida, Malta

4 Department of Prehistoric Archaeology, University of Cologne, 50931 Cologne, Germany

Patrick Roberts

2 Department of Archaeology, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Kahlaische Strasse 10, 07745, Jena, Germany

5 School of Social Sciences, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia

S. Yoshi Maezumi

6 Department of Ecosystem and Landscape Dynamics, Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics, University of Amsterdam, 1098 XH Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Yadvinder Malhi

7 Environmental Change Institute, School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3QY, UK

Associated Data

This article has no additional data.

Since Darwin, studies of human evolution have tended to give primacy to open ‘savannah’ environments as the ecological cradle of our lineage, with dense tropical forests cast as hostile, unfavourable frontiers. These perceptions continue to shape both the geographical context of fieldwork as well as dominant narratives concerning hominin evolution. This paradigm persists despite new, ground-breaking research highlighting the role of tropical forests in the human story. For example, novel research in Africa's rainforests has uncovered archaeological sites dating back into the Pleistocene; genetic studies have revealed very deep human roots in Central and West Africa and in the tropics of Asia and the Pacific; an unprecedented number of coexistent hominin species have now been documented, including Homo erectus , the ‘Hobbit’ ( Homo floresiensis ), Homo luzonensis , Denisovans, and Homo sapiens . Some of the earliest members of our own species to reach South Asia, Southeast Asia, Oceania and the tropical Americas have shown an unexpected rapidity in their adaptation to even some of the more ‘extreme’ tropical settings. This includes the early human manipulation of species and even habitats. This volume builds on these currently disparate threads and, for the first time, draws together a group of interdisciplinary, agenda-setting papers that firmly places a broader spectrum of tropical environments at the heart of the deep human past.

This article is part of the theme issue ‘Tropical forests in the deep human past’.

1.  The tropics: a frontier for the deep human past

The perception that open grasslands and savannahs were the ecological ‘cradle’ of humans and their ancestors has shaped both the geographical context of fieldwork as well as dominant narratives concerning early hominin evolution, dispersal and cultural development [ 1 , 2 ]. By contrast, tropical forests, where fossil preservation tends to be poorer (e.g. [ 3 , 4 ]), have been presented as relatively pristine environments left free from human influence—habitats deemed too hostile for humans throughout much of prehistory (e.g. [ 5 ], see also [ 6 ] for overview). Indeed, they have often been framed as the primaeval environments we ‘escaped’ from in Africa, leaving behind the lineages of our close Great Ape relatives [ 2 , 7 ]. These attitudes have profoundly impacted narratives of human evolution in Africa and Out of Africa by introducing enormous biases in the construction of global human prehistory and palaeoenvironments. Such biases have meant that the palaeoanthropological record is fundamentally the human history of a narrow set of habitats, notably along coastlines and in open grassland settings, driving a circular argument that such places are the only areas worth investigating—at the expense of others. These settings and habitats have even been elevated to the status of adaptive cruxes, with ‘savannah corridors’ [ 8 ] or coastal ‘highways’ and refugia [ 9 , 10 ] being seen as critical to the cultural efflorescence and dispersal of our species.

As Homo species spread from Africa, they encountered and engaged with tropical forest biomes across South and Southeast Asia, the Pacific and ultimately, in the case of our own species, the tropical Americas ( figure 1 ). Despite popular perception of vast homogeneous green canopies, the tropical forests of these regions comprise an incredibly diverse set of ecosystems. Although wet, lowland evergreen rainforests are often seen as the classic manifestation of this habitat, ecologists have long noted the huge variety of tropical forests that exist on the planet [ 12 – 14 ]. Semi-evergreen forests with a short annual dry season, montane and sub-alpine forests, closed-canopy dry forests and swamp forests all have different characteristics, structures and species compositions that present a series of challenges and opportunities for hominin populations [ 15 ]. In many contexts, tropical forests form mosaic landscapes with open ecosystems such as lowland savannahs or montane grasslands. Furthermore, despite assumptions that tropical forests have been relatively unchanged, there is ample evidence that past fluctuations in precipitation, temperature and CO 2 concentration have impacted forest form and extent in different parts of the tropics throughout the Miocene, Pliocene, Pleistocene and Holocene [ 16 – 18 ]. As we will also see in this volume, the arrival of hominins, particularly Homo sapiens , into these forests may also have introduced further changes to fire dynamics [ 19 – 21 ], species composition [ 22 ] and structure [ 21 ]. Thus, while tropical forests can be defined as sitting between the latitudes of 23.5° N (the Tropic of Cancer) and 23.5° S (the Tropic of Capricorn), covering the tropics of Central and South America, western and central Africa, western India, Southeast Asia and Oceania, they are far from being homogeneous and, in the case of Australia and China [ 13 ], local edaphic and hydrological regimes have led to similar biomes straying beyond the astronomically defined tropics, as they have also done in the past [ 16 ]. Some authors refer here to megathermal forests, defined as forest biomes where the risk of frost damage is non-existent, enabling a proliferation of species diversity [ 16 ]. In warm periods of Earth history, such as the Eocene, such megathermal forests (functionally tropical forests) have extended to the latitudes of Canada and northern Europe.

Map of Late Pleistocene human dispersals showing the dates of earliest suggested arrival in the tropical forests of different regions. Green shading shows an artistic approximation of the current tropical forest distribution based on MODIS (moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer) Land Cover MCD12Q1 majority landcover type 1, class 2 for 2012. Downloaded from the US Geological Survey Earth Resources Observation System (EROS) Data Center (EDC). See Roberts and Petraglia [ 11 ].

Far from being uninhabited by hominins, African tropical forest habitats seem to have been integral to our hominin ancestors [ 23 ], and Homo erectus notably reached Southeast Asia 1.2 million years ago (Ma), at a time when it has been argued that tropical forest was widespread ([ 24 , 25 ]—although see [ 26 ]). These environments likely formed at least part of the backdrop of local trajectories of evolution, as manifested in species such as Homo floresiensis and Homo luzonensis [ 27 – 29 ]. However, in the history of our genus, it was Homo sapiens that went on to most intensively inhabit and exploit tropical forests [ 6 , 15 ]. For many years, this was thought to have been a relatively recent chapter in the human story. Tropical forests were simply considered too hostile. In this view, the dense vegetation, cryptic fauna and sparsely distributed carbohydrates and fats in rainforests made these ecosystems too resource-poor for humans without recourse to sophisticated technologies, external support and exchange systems ([ 30 , 31 ]; see [ 32 ]). These views have markedly shaped palaeoanthropological research, particularly in Africa, by focusing fieldwork away from vast swathes of dense forest. Indeed, both ecologically and archaeologically, Africa's tropical forests remain the least well-investigated tropical forests in the world. Although anthropologists, human ecologists and archaeologists have repeatedly reiterated that hunter–gatherers can, and do, permanently live in tropical forests, including rainforests (e.g. discussions in [ 11 , 33 ]), they continue to be frequently neglected in deep time archaeological and palaeoanthropological discussions in Africa.

Instead, it is recent research in Asia that has transformed this field of research by firmly pushing back human exploitation and occupation of tropical forests well into the Pleistocene. Research on the island of Sumatra has found evidence for the presence of humans in rainforests dating to 73 thousand years ago (ka) [ 34 ]. In Borneo, a suite of behaviours including the processing of toxic plants, possible alteration of forest edges, and the hunting of forest arboreal fauna has been dated to around 45 ka [ 35 , 36 ]. Seemingly contemporaneously in Sri Lanka, specialist tropical forest adaptations at approximately 45 ka include the hunting of monkeys [ 37 – 39 ], with isotope geochemistry demonstrating a year-round dietary reliance rather than use as seasonal camps [ 38 , 40 ]. These discoveries confirm that intensive exploitation of forest resources has significant antiquity in the human past. Not only that, but they seem to confirm a new, unique ecological adaptability for H. sapiens which repeatedly made specialist niche expansions across a broad ecological spectrum well before the beginning of agriculture [ 41 ]. Similarly, in South America, humans seem to have occupied tropical lowland and montane forest environments soon after their arrival on the continent (12–14 ka). This appears to have initially taken place along river banks and drier fringes of the lowland and montane forest zone. However, within a few millennia, human occupation pushed deeper into the Amazon forest, primarily along river networks, although archaeological evidence may be biased to such accessible sites [ 19 , 20 ]. Human occupation modes ranged from hunting and gathering to agricultural systems which were based either on locally originated domestications such as manioc and squashes, or imported from Mesoamerica, such as maize.

Despite this growing body of research, however, many major questions remain concerning the deep human past in the global tropics: when did hominins first colonize different tropical forest environments and how did this impact evolutionary trajectories? How did diverse tropical environments drive ancient population structure and the emergence of our species? And finally, when did humans begin to significantly impact and alter tropical forests, and how? This volume draws together a set of state-of-the-art papers investigating these questions from around the global tropics. Starting in Africa, the birthplace of our species, they show that these ecosystems have shaped and been shaped by human agency for millennia. The contributions to this volume also highlight the ways in which diverse, and often novel, methodological applications, from geoarchaeology to isotope analysis, from new chronometric programmes to palaeoecology, are coming together to provide a richer picture of tropical human history.

2.  African tropical forests

The tropical forests of Africa were the first to be encountered by H. sapiens and its hominin ancestors. Africa's forests have particular structural and floral characteristics including an unusually high biomass of animals, which could potentially act as a food resource for humans. Many areas of Africa's humid forests, for example, are sustained by relatively low rainfall that sits at the edge of rainforest viability, which means that even small changes in precipitation can drive dramatic forest fragmentation [ 17 ]. Throughout the Pleistocene and Holocene, it appears that many African forests have gone through periods of expansion and contraction as climatic conditions fluctuated, and often a mosaic environment of mixed forests and grasslands was the norm over much of the African tropical forest biome; over the prevailing glacial conditions of the Pleistocene, low humidity and carbon dioxide conditions mean that the overall extent of African forests was generally less than in the present. Tree species diversity in Africa is also lower than in Amazonia and Southeast Asian forests, but taller and larger trees mean that Africa's forests store more carbon than for example, Amazonian forests [ 42 ]. These tropical forests also often interdigitate with open grassland regions in a mosaic or patchwork that breaks down a simple dichotomy between open grassland and closed-canopy forest [ 43 ]. Such mosaic landscapes may have prevailed over much of the present forest zone throughout the Pleistocene and provided unique, and critical, opportunities for hominins.

The limited current evidence suggests that humans and their ancestors may have been taking advantage of ecotonal regions for a long time. A hominin tooth from Central Africa indicates that at least some early populations were living in mixed environments at the edges of forests around 2.5 Ma [ 44 ]. Later on in time, following the emergence of our species, the site of Panga ya Saidi in Kenya shows that humans were exploiting mixed tropical forest/grassland environments ca 78 ka, while producing symbolic materials and a variety of technological toolkits [ 45 , 46 ]. If Africa's internal regions hosted the bulk of human populations in the Pleistocene, environments that required humans to flexibly shift between diverse ecotones may have formed the cradle for our species' ecological modernity. In this emerging view, the reliance on different resources may have been the driver that set populations apart, rather than the environments themselves (e.g. [ 47 ]). These processes may sit at the root of our species, which is now thought to have evolved in subdivided populations across much of the continent [ 48 ]. When did this, and a hominin focus on tropical forest occupation, begin?

Braucher et al . [ 49 ] suggest a longer history than previously supposed. They report the oldest evidence of a hominin presence in the Congo Basin, with a minimum age of between 850 and 650 ka. Discovered in 1987, Elarmékora is a high terrace sitting above the Ogooué River within the Lopé National Park in Gabon. The authors present the first absolute dates for the small lithic assemblage found there, including mainly cobble artefacts embedded within alluvial material. Cosmogenic nuclide assessments suggest a minimum age of between 730 and 620 ka for the undiagnostic Earlier Stone Age assemblage. This age is among the oldest documenting a hominin presence in western Central Africa and confirms the long legacy of hominins in this region. These results indicate that the long-held assumption that a hominin presence in tropical forests only emerged following the arrival of agriculture should be rejected, and reorients geographical assessments of human dispersals in and beyond Africa.

This tantalizing picture of a long-term hominin presence in the tropical forest regions of Africa sits within a backdrop of 1 million years of dynamic climatic and environmental change. Here, Gosling and colleagues [ 50 ] synthesize information on Pleistocene and Holocene vegetation changes from long-term terrestrial and marine records, showing how the locations of vegetative resources for hominins shifted geographically over time (see also [ 51 ]). Of particular interest is the fact that the hominin presence in the Congo Basin described by Braucher et al . [ 49 ], coincides with generally humid conditions and therefore likely a period of forest expansion, rather than fragmentation. Furthermore, a profound shift in the hydro-climate in the last 1 Myr in Africa, leading to eastern and western parts of the forest zones being alternately wetter and drier, occurs at a time when the first fossil appearances of our species have been suggested elsewhere in Africa (e.g. [ 52 ]). For later time periods associated with H. sapiens , vegetative changes were clearly asynchronous in different regions, likely producing the conditions for mixed resource acquisition in many regions and necessitating adaptability.

Taylor [ 53 ] specifically pursues the question of mixed resource acquisition through Pleistocene material culture from the Middle Stone Age (MSA), the first and longest-lasting technological repertoire associated with our species. Specifically, he looks at the Lupemban, a stone tool (lithic) technocomplex that has long been associated with Africa's equatorial forests at the site of Kalambo Falls in Zambia. Here, the Lupemban has been best dated to between 270 and 170 ka. Today, Kalambo Falls is dominated by Miombo woodland, and Twin Rivers, another key Lupemban site, by open woodland-bushland. While both sites are just beyond current areas of forest, they may have been within forest zones in the past. Given the frequent interdigitation of open and closed environments in Africa's forests, Taylor argues that H. sapiens may have been adopting a flexible strategy within ecotonal areas that may indicate a partial reliance on forest resources. Taylor concludes that the lanceolate points of the Lupemban may have presented an adaptation to a vegetation mosaic that underscores a potentially unique human niche.

These results complement the work from Blinkhorn et al . [ 54 ] on the availability of refugia in tropical Africa. Refugia are places that remained stable and habitable through various cycles of climate change (see [ 55 ]). As the only continent where H. sapiens have clearly persisted through multiple glacial-interglacial cycles, Africa is a key area where classic refugia models can be formulated and tested. Blinkhorn et al . [ 54 ] apply climatic thresholds on human habitation, rooted in ethnographic studies, in combination with high-resolution model datasets for precipitation and biome distributions to identify persistent refugia spanning the Late Pleistocene (130–10 ka). Remarkably, Blinkhorn and colleagues find that refugia were unlikely to be rare phenomena during the Late Pleistocene, even using conservative estimates. One region that emerges as among the most stable is the modern-day Sene-Gambia region, where MSA assemblages have been remarkably persistent [ 47 , 56 ]. Blinkhorn and colleagues also highlight the broad distributions of stable ecotonal areas, which may have been critical for long-term human habitation [ 45 , 51 , 57 ].

Moving on in time, Orijemie [ 58 ] synthesizes past climatic variability in the forest of West-Central Africa during the Late Pleistocene–Holocene period to understand the interaction of climate on the development and stability of human communities in the region over time. Combining palaeoclimate and vegetation histories, Orijemie highlights the significance of climate variability on the development and survival of early hominin ancestors and humans in the forest regions of West-Central Africa. In response to major climatic fluctuations, West-Central African savannahs expanded at the expense of forests, but did not transit into strictly ‘forest’ or ‘savannah’ blocks. Rather, the forests had a variety of vegetation types and biodiversity ecotones, even during periods of environmental stress. These data suggest heterogeneous and resilient forest ecosystems. Human behaviours exhibited in the form of technological modifications and changes in subsistence strategies, varied independently of climate and vegetation changes, suggesting climate was not the prevailing driver of human behaviour or community stability.

This brings us to the present day, and Boyette and colleagues synthesize genetic, paleoclimatological, and historical linguistic data on the peopling of the Congo Basin and use this to build on their ethnographic work in the northern Republic of Congo with BaYaka foragers living along the Motaba river. They argue that the cultivation of ‘relational wealth’, that is, the forming of strong social ties to enable exchanges of resources and mutual assistance, is key to living in tropical forest environments. This currently includes the cultivation of such wealth among different forest forager groups as well as trading relationships with farmers. Here, Boyette and colleagues argue that it is a mistake to cast this trading as a dependence of foragers on farmers. The BaYaka are seasonally mobile with their own forest gardens, created using knowledge learned from farmers, as well as the creation of spaces for the growth of wild foods such as Dioscorea yams. They are also highly seasonally mobile, with some 82 km being the largest distance between where a parent was born and where their adult child now lives. Indeed, Boyette and colleagues argue that mobility is central to the flow of knowledge throughout the Congo Basin, including subsistence innovations and forest spirit dances. This complements the work of the previous papers that indicate that a high degree of mobility was always required to successfully live in this region. At the same time, Boyette and colleagues review the genetic studies that indicate that western and eastern branches of the forager populations split between 30 and 20 ka, probably following forest fragmentation well before the beginning of agriculture. This implies that significant breaks between different ecosystems may have been major boundaries in the past to populations either adapted to mixed resources or specific habitats.

3.  Southeast Asian and pacific forests

Since no continuous tropical forest belt exists between the African and southern and eastern Asian forests ( figure 1 ), moving into other parts of the tropics must have involved repeated adaptation to varied tropical forest ecosystems. In fact, human groups expanding beyond Africa would have encountered significantly drier landscapes that spread into the Thar Desert of India before re-entering tropical zones again [ 59 – 61 ]. Once encountered, the Asian tropical forests presented a completely different set of floral and faunal characteristics compared to those in Africa. In contrast with Africa, Asian tropical forest extent was probably greater throughout the prevailing glacial conditions of the Pleistocene, as low sea levels greatly increased land area and connectivity in Sundaland and Sahul, while the generally maritime climate maintained high rainfall [ 62 ]. Moving into the tropical forests of Wallacea and the Pacific, humans would also have to contend with unique insular tropical ecosystems and the necessity of seafaring (see [ 63 ]).

It is in Asian tropical forests that archaeological and palaeoanthropological evidence began to highlight the critical role of tropical forests in early human adaptations and dispersals. Be it in Sumatra 73 ka [ 34 ], Borneo 50–45 ka [ 35 , 36 ], Sri Lanka 45 ka [ 37 , 39 , 64 ] and perhaps also southern China as early as 100 ka [ 65 ], human populations appear to have repeatedly adapted to tropical forest environments rapidly following their arrival in different parts of tropical Asia. These adaptations do not correspond to a constant wave, with uniform technologies, but rather highlight repeated, variable responses to different forest settings. For example, findings of the bow and arrow and clothing manufacture in Sri Lanka 45 ka [ 66 ] provide a very different context for this innovation than assumptions of its association with drying grasslands or European tundra conditions. Similarly, although the ‘Hoabhinian’ core and flake technologies found across much of Southeast Asia during the Late Pleistocene had been previously considered ‘simple’, more recent work and experimental analyses have highlighted the potential flexibility of these stone tools and their likely association with the manufacture of organic artefacts [ 67 ].

Understanding the exact context of human arrival in Southeast Asia has been plagued by issues of site and artefact preservation, correlation between hominin and palaeontological records, as well as issues with chronology construction. In this volume, Louys et al . [ 68 ] re-examine the fossil deposits of Lida Ajer in Sumatra which documents some of the earliest evidence for the presence of modern humans in tropical forests. Two human teeth from this cave were estimated to be 73–63 kyr old, which is significantly older than estimates of modern human migration out of Africa based on genetic data. The authors provide a new assessment of the available ages and stratigraphic information from the site, confirming its antiquity. The deposits were previously interpreted as rainforest based largely on the presence of abundant orangutan fossils, although their exact ecological preferences remained debatable. The use of stable carbon and oxygen stable isotope analyses of mammalian fossil tooth enamel further demonstrates that early humans likely occupied the site during marine isotope stage 4 (MIS 4; ca 74–60 ka) dominated by a closed-canopy forest very similar to those present in the region today, although the fossil orangutans appear to have occupied a slightly different niche in the rainforest than their modern counterparts.

Similarly, McAdams et al . [ 69 ] undertake geoarchaeological analysis of two archaeological cave sites in Vietnam. By MIS 3, it is clear that our species had dispersed throughout much of Southeast Asia, including the diverse forest systems of upland Vietnam. Here, wetter, sheltered conditions resulted in forest refugia that were attractive to early human populations, with the collection of diverse resources, such as land snails, providing resilience subsistence strategies. Nevertheless, the middens which record such evidence, and the caves in which they are formed, are subject to a series of unique diagenetic and site formation processes that need to be better understood to understand the nature and tempo of human adaptations and settlement patterns. McAdams and colleagues show how thin-section micromorphology is providing more refined insights into depositional and post-depositional sites across tropical zones, providing a basis for wider analysis of our species' interaction with tropical forests around the world.

Finally, moving out into the Pacific realm, Roberts et al . [ 63 ] present new radiocarbon and stable isotope data from the earliest human remains so far excavated in tropical island settings in Near and Remote Oceania. This is a key region for exploring early maritime crossings, human adaptations to insular and coastal environments, and the possibility of interactions between different hominin species. Roberts et al . [ 63 ] show that there is currently a significant gap between the earliest occupation of the portion of Near Oceania beyond the continent of Sahul approximately 45 ka and the oldest human remains from the region approximately 11.8 ka. However, the authors demonstrate that Late Pleistocene–Holocene humans living on islands in the Bismarck Archipelago and Vanuatu had a persistent reliance on tropical forest plants and animals. These habitats, rather than solely coastal settings and arriving domesticates, provided critical settings for human adaptation and landscape manipulation.

4.  Neotropical forests

Current archaeological and genomic data suggest that the Americas were colonized sometime between approximately 25 and 15 ka by modern humans likely following the Pacific Rim corridor from northeast Asia into the New World, reaching southern Chile by ca 14.3 ka [ 70 – 72 ]. Early human populations in the Americas have traditionally been portrayed as mobile hunter–gatherers who exploited coastal resources and large savannah game, while avoiding forest habitats as a result of the absence of large mammals and the difficulties of mobility in dense forest vegetation [ 73 – 75 ]. Contrary to this classic paradigm, mounting evidence suggests early colonists were actively exploiting and managing trees of economic importance and quite quickly began practicing early cultivation of annual crops [ 76 – 83 ]. These data have important implications for understanding plant domestication, the long-term legacy of human–plant interactions and the potential role of humans in the current hyperdominance of useful plants in Amazonia [ 22 , 84 , 85 ].

In this volume, Bush et al . [ 19 ] and Nascimento et al . [ 20 ] synthesize paleoecological data to paint detailed pictures of the timing and ecological impacts of early human arrival in the tropical Andes and Amazon lowlands, respectively. In the Andes, the earliest evidence of human occupation occurs around 14–12 ka, coinciding with a time of rapid climate change as species were migrating upslope in response to deglacial warming. The retreat of the glaciers opened up the relatively flat and dry areas of the upper montane Andes (3000–4000 m elevation), and this region seems to have been among the most amenable American tropical regions for first human settlement (see also [ 86 ]). By 12 ka most areas now characterized as high elevation Andean grasslands ( puna and paramo ) were being burned and modified. Bush and colleagues suggest these extensive grasslands should be regarded as long-term anthropogenic Holocene landscapes, and likewise the sharp treeline between the forests of the Andean flank and the grasslands should be regarded as anthropogenic rather than climate-defined. These dense forests of the montane flank were probably less settled than the flatter and drier upland regions for both topographic and climate reasons, though by the mid-Holocene accessible regions of the montane forest zone were substantially modified and settled [ 19 ].

In the extensive Amazon lowlands, the first evidence of human occupation appears around 12 ka, located mainly along the Amazon river and the dry forest-savannah mosaic of the Amazon forest periphery. The more forested areas of southern Amazonia show signs of occupation from 6 ka, with substantial increase in range and density since 4 ka. By the time of European arrival, human occupation had spread across much of the Amazon biome, particularly along its river networks. The earliest human settlers of the Americas encountered continents rich in exotic and now-extinct megafauna, and this is likely true of the tropical Americas as much as for high latitudes. Overall, 34 out of 47 megafaunal species became extinct in South America [ 87 , 88 ]. These megafauna were undoubtedly in the savannah, Andean grassland and savannah-forest transition zones, but the direct evidence of megafaunal occupation of the dense forest zone (as occurs, for example, in African tropical forests) is limited and hampered by poor preservation. The direct cause of the extinction seems to be a confluence of rapid climate change putting wildlife populations under stress, coupled with human pressures through hunting and habitat modification adding additional pressure and preventing the recovery from refugia that occurred after previous periods of environmental variability.

By examining paleoecological evidence from lakes across the Andes, Bush et al . [ 19 ] describe the timing of this transition, with widespread demise of megafauna around 12.5 ka, soon after an increase of fire. They propose the megafauna were stressed by the rapid warming and wet conditions of the deglaciation and population recovery was prevented by hunters who transformed the high Andean landscape through burning. Iriarte et al . [ 89 ] present a compelling picture of this first encounter between Neotropical humans and megafauna, making a detailed case based on rock art found at Serranía de la Lindosa, Colombia, on the present-day ecotone between the northwestern Amazon forest and the Orinoco savannahs. They suggest that this art dates from the Late Pleistocene (around 12.6 ka) and among many other things depicts lost megafauna such as giant sloth (probably Eremotherium ), a camelid (possibly Paleollama ) and a three-toed ungulate (probably Xenorhinotherium ).

Human impacts on Neotropical forests also involved interaction with plant communities [ 90 ], and the region is home to the smallest temporal gap between human arrival and cultivation practices in the tropics. An independent Amazonian origin of agriculture has been a particularly significant discovery in recent years, with manioc ( Manihot ) and squash ( Cucurbita ) cultivation appearing on artificial forest islands in the seasonally flooded savannahs of Beni, Bolivia as early as 10.4 ka [ 78 ]. Cultivation dating to 9 ka also appears in the forest zone north of the savannahs [ 91 ], and there are signs of cultivation near campsites in northwest Amazonia [ 80 ]. In regions away from plant cultivation, early- to mid-Holocene foragers consumed palms, tree fruits and nuts [ 20 ]; many of these species are now hyperdominant in Amazonia and it has been suggested that the elevated abundance of these species across Amazonia may reflect selection and stewardship by indigenous populations over millennia [ 84 ].

The extent to which Amazonia is a cultural landscape with a significant long-term human footprint is still disputed, however [ 19 ]. Nascimento et al . [ 20 ] present an extensive paleoecological synthesis of the ecological effects of early human occupation of Amazonia. Significant vegetation changes are often argued to be found only centuries to millennia after the first signs of human settlement in forests, suggesting that the earliest occupants exerted only a gradual change on the forest. The dry forest-savannah zone seems to have been particularly favoured; as in Africa, this mosaic landscape provides a wide range of resources, and also the possibility of working with and enhancing natural fire regimes to aid vegetation clearance and ecosystem transformation. Maezumi et al . [ 21 ] examine the role of land use, cultural burning and soil enrichment in shaping the composition and structure of the Amazon forest ecotone. They integrate 6000 years of archaeological and palaeoecological data from Laguna Versalles, Bolivia which was dominated by stable forest vegetation throughout the last 10 000 years. These data document the management of forest composition and structure, cultural burning, cultivation of edible plants and the formation of anthropogenic Amazonian Dark (ADE) soils. Frequent cultural burning altered ADE forest composition and structure by controlling ignitions, decreasing fuel loads and increasing the abundance of fire-adapted plants.

With the expanding and varied record of human history in Neotropical forests now established, it remains to explore how human occupation of the varied habitats available, from seasonally dry forests to lowland rainforests, impacted patterns of human settlement, adaptation and culture. In this volume, Sales and colleagues use a statistical approach to explore the spatial distribution of Indigenous populations across the tropical Andes prior to European arrival. They note how variability in elevation, cloud frequency, river proximity and seasonal aridity may have significantly shaped human occupancy. Sales and colleagues present an estimate of the portion of this area occupied by pre-Columbian populations and note how a number of forest ecosystems still document anthropogenic influence centuries later. Further detailed investigations of the tropical forests of the Andes, and elsewhere in tropical North, Central and South America should enable a more detailed understanding as to the tempo and nature of repeated human adaptations to the tropical forests of this region through the Pleistocene and Holocene.

5.  Synthesis

Tropical forests clearly represent a key human habitat that can no longer be ignored in the context of deep human history. In particular, the wealth of data, methods and insights emerging from tropical forests in Asia and South America is driving a tropical research agenda that has so far lagged somewhat behind in Africa, the evolutionary home of our species. What can be said so far, and what are the major future research questions and approaches ( figure 2 )?

The relationship between theory and research goals for understanding the role of tropical forests in the deep human past. (Online version in colour.)

Perhaps the most obvious outcome of increasing archaeological research in tropical forests is that we can no longer afford to think about them as peripheral areas to the main stage of human evolution and the early human past. Despite the persistence of various hypotheses tied to savannahs, grasslands and coasts across both the Old and the New World, humans are fundamentally plastic in their behaviour [ 92 ]. This plasticity is seen among earlier Homo species, as well as our own. As an extreme example, it is remarkable how humans adapted from being Arctic hunter–gatherers to Amazonian cultivators within a few millennia. It therefore seems unlikely that humans ever restricted themselves to any single narrow set of resources [ 41 ]. Indeed, it seems unlikely that the pan-African distribution of the MSA—the earliest and longest-lasting cultural phase associated with our species—was only ever present in grasslands and savannahs. Building on this, researchers must begin to abandon simple dichotomies between ‘rainforest’ and ‘savannah’ as mutually exclusive areas of human habitation.

Along a spectrum of adaptation, it may well be that various human groups found specialist solutions to their particular habitat of choice; however, in many cases specialization is likely found in the ability to remain flexible and exploit a range of habitats and their resources [ 41 ]. Indeed, it is the clear, repeated ability of our species to adapt in different ways to these habitats, among others, that might be what sets us apart from our closest relatives. As we have seen, for example in Africa, tropical forests are not themselves homogeneous blocks. Instead, forests for example, can interdigitate with clearings, drier forest types, palm swamps, gallery forests, grassy floodplains and savannahs that invite such flexible exploitation. To investigate this further, it seems clear that vast swathes of tropical forests remain to be investigated. Despite the emerging work in Southeast Asia and Amazonia, substantial areas remain near completely unexplored, particularly in Africa, for what they can say about the deep human past. What expectations should we have, and what methods should we be using?

The papers of this volume also highlight that many of the most recent advances in our understanding of early human encounters with tropical forests have involved the application of varied methodologies that cut across the social and natural sciences. Resolving the role of tropical forests in the deep human past is clearly a truly interdisciplinary endeavour, often involving ‘an archaeology of the invisible’. For example, traces of human activities may be found in the current distributions and community composition of wild plants and trees (such as palm nuts in the Congo Basin and brazil nuts in the Amazon Basin), in patterns of charcoal accumulation [ 93 ] and in alterations of soil composition in palaeoenvironmental cores and archaeological sites [ 83 ], and faunal communities [ 39 ] ( figure 2 ). The study of the growth rings of living trees (dendrochronology) has even been shown to track human management of forests in more recent periods [ 94 ]. In warm and wet ecosystems where organic preservation is low and sites difficult to find and locate, the traces of human impact on the environment may sometimes be the only evidence of past occupation. Stable isotope analysis of human tooth enamel has also emerged as a means of assessing overall dietary reliance in the face of incomplete plant and animal assemblages [ 38 , 40 , 63 ]. Such sensitive approaches must be combined with traditional archaeological investigations in order to fully appreciate the context of past human engagement with tropical forests.

When it comes to the archaeology of Pleistocene tropical forests, we should not necessarily always expect radically transformed stone tool types, but also more generalist and flexible tools capable of dealing with a dynamic contextual environment ( figure 3 ). In Africa, regionalization of the MSA may shed more light on the degree of isolation between groups rather than purely environmental determinants, and clearly a range of MSA tools can be used in a wide variety of contexts. Ubiquitous, generic elements of MSA toolkits are also found across Africa for over 300 thousand years, suggesting they met flexible and dynamic needs in a variety of environments. Indeed, examples from the rainforests of Southeast Asia suggest that specialist adaptations can be found beyond simply lithics, in the form of the development of organic tools involving bamboo and other materials, in the type of prey targeted, in possible trapping techniques that may leave no trace, and in the treatment of carbohydrates such as the detoxification of tubers [ 95 ]. Southeast Asian ‘Hoabhinian’ technologies (see [ 96 ]) may provide an interesting comparison to MSA technologies in West and Central Africa in future, in this regard, although lithics analyses have often retained a local and regional focus. Meanwhile, microliths and bone tools found in Sri Lanka, argued to be part of early bow and arrow technologies [ 66 ], indicate another route towards specialized tropical adaptation.

Conceptual figure of land use in: ( a ) hominins using the forest edge, ( b ) early humans exploiting forest resources, ( c ) specialized adaptations in the forests of Sri Lanka/South Asia and ( d ) polyculture agroforestry in Amazonia. (Online version in colour.)

When it comes to unravelling this global tropical record of human evolution, the unknowns are numerous. Despite the work done to date, we still often have no clear ideas of when H. sapiens first began to intensively exploit different types of tropical forests in a given region, and whether such behaviour can also be observed in ancestral species ( figure 3 ). We also do not know how this may have specifically been characterized. Did past Pleistocene forest foragers rely on high mobility and strong social networks? How did they navigate the forest, for example, using forest elephant trails in Africa, as well as the river networks that may have been key for human mobility in Amazonia? How may they have used the forest seasonally, for example, by controlling the distribution and location of preferred wild foods at certain times of year, such as the land snails of North Vietnam? Many of these questions have long been asked of Pleistocene sites in temperate Eurasia and southern and eastern Africa. However, a general absence of tropical forests in wider theoretical discussions in human evolution means these themes are only just starting to become accessible for these environments. At a broader level, it is still unclear whether tropical forests could sometimes still represent significant barriers, for example, driving population structure. How important were forest edges and ecotonal regions in human evolution?

Moving into the Holocene, the evidence is a little less sparse, but many questions remain. Many of the biases can also still be found. For example, research in forests continues to be dominated by geographic biases, for example, focusing on rivers or dry margins. In Africa, forest research in the Holocene still lags behind similar work in the Americas in particular. Yet the Late Pleistocene and Holocene also provide opportunities through which human adaptations to forests can be better understood, as there are multiple cases of human colonization of tropical forest environments that can be compared and contrasted. How was the ecology of the tropical forests that humans occupied in the Late Pleistocene and early Holocene different from those of the late Holocene, given changing atmospheric carbon dioxide and dynamic shifting mosaic landscapes? How did megafauna either hinder or facilitate forest occupation? How do biogeographical differences across the tropics, such as the relatively low-fruit abundance in the wind-dispersal-dominated dipterocarp forests of southeast Asia, affect how early humans used forest resources? And how may the long history of human occupation of these forests have also shaped the species composition of modern-day tropical forests?

The ‘big questions’ that remain are summarized in box 1 . Addressing these will require the continuation and expansion of foundational research across the global tropics, alongside the recognition that there is a whole spectrum of tropical forest habitats, not just ‘rainforests’. The pursuit of these goals will require the investment of funding agencies and a commitment of risk to further research. These are, after all, not the ‘well-trodden’ regions of grassland and savannah, where a wealth of previous discoveries robustly attests to future potential. In particular, funding for local researchers to lead multidisciplinary investigation of tropical regions will be essential to boosting tropical forest archaeological and palaeoanthropological research. Investment in tropical forests, and researchers within the tropics, will lead to a new and enriched understanding of the deep human past: the accumulation as well as the importance of evidence to date unmistakably supports this view. This volume represents a substantial step in furthering this goal and represents a call to scholars and funders alike to give new attention to how our collective human prehistory interweaves with this globally important ecological region.

Big Questions.

• 1. What is the time depth of human and even hominin engagement with tropical forests?
• 2. How many times did humans adapt to tropical forests?
• 3. How do repeated adaptations to tropical forests compare across the global tropical belt, and are they underpinned by any commonalities specific to these environments?
• 4. What was the speed of transition from dry/open to tropical forest environments, and how did forest-savannah transition zones act as entry points?
• 5. How can we characterize the dynamism of tropical forest climate and distribution throughout the Pleistocene, and which were the mosaics favoured by early humans?
• 6. Were dense tropical forests largely barriers or corridors?
• 7. How does the varying ecological biogeography of tropical forests affect how they have been used and stewarded by humans in the past?
• 8. Do mosaic forest environments generate new resources greater than the sum of forest and savannahs alone (e.g. edge specialist species)?
• 9. How have the diverse forests shaped adaptations, from foraging to agriculture, e.g. discussions of seasonal environments as critical to early tropical cultivation? How far does this hold, and what were the legacies of diminishing megafauna?
• 10. How has the long history of human interaction with tropical forests influenced the modern ecology and function of these forests?

Data accessibility

Authors' contributions.

E.M.L.S.: conceptualization, writing—original draft and writing—review and editing; P.R.: conceptualization, writing—original draft and writing—review and editing; Y.M.: conceptualization, writing—original draft and writing—review and editing; S.Y.M.: conceptualization, writing—original draft and writing—review and editing. All authors gave final approval for publication and agreed to be held accountable for the work performed therein.

Conflict of interest declaration

This theme issue was put together by the Guest Editor team under supervision from the journal's Editorial staff, following the Royal Society's ethical codes and best-practice guidelines. The Guest Editor team invited contributions and handled the review process. Individual Guest Editors were not involved in assessing papers where they had a personal, professional or financial conflict of interest with the authors or the research described. Independent reviewers assessed all papers. Invitation to contribute did not guarantee inclusion.

Open access funding provided by the Max Planck Society.

E.M.L.S. and P.R. thank the Max Planck Society for funding. P.R. is funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement number 850709; PANTROPOCENE). Y.M. is supported by the Jackson Foundation. S.Y.M. was supported by the European Commission (Marie CurieFellowship 792197).

ENCYCLOPEDIC ENTRY

Deforestation.

Deforestation is the intentional clearing of forested land.

Biology, Ecology, Conservation

Trees are cut down for timber, waiting to be transported and sold.

Photograph by Esemelwe

Deforestation is the purposeful clearing of forested land. Throughout history and into modern times, forests have been razed to make space for agriculture and animal grazing, and to obtain wood for fuel, manufacturing, and construction.

Deforestation has greatly altered landscapes around the world. About 2,000 years ago, 80 percent of Western Europe was forested; today the figure is 34 percent. In North America, about half of the forests in the eastern part of the continent were cut down from the 1600s to the 1870s for timber and agriculture. China has lost great expanses of its forests over the past 4,000 years and now just over 20 percent of it is forested. Much of Earth’s farmland was once forests.

Today, the greatest amount of deforestation is occurring in tropical rainforests, aided by extensive road construction into regions that were once almost inaccessible. Building or upgrading roads into forests makes them more accessible for exploitation. Slash-and-burn agriculture is a big contributor to deforestation in the tropics. With this agricultural method, farmers burn large swaths of forest, allowing the ash to fertilize the land for crops. The land is only fertile for a few years, however, after which the farmers move on to repeat the process elsewhere. Tropical forests are also cleared to make way for logging, cattle ranching, and oil palm and rubber tree plantations.

Deforestation can result in more carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere. That is because trees take in carbon dioxide from the air for photosynthesis , and carbon is locked chemically in their wood. When trees are burned, this carbon returns to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide . With fewer trees around to take in the carbon dioxide , this greenhouse gas accumulates in the atmosphere and accelerates global warming.

Deforestation also threatens the world’s biodiversity . Tropical forests are home to great numbers of animal and plant species. When forests are logged or burned, it can drive many of those species into extinction. Some scientists say we are already in the midst of a mass-extinction episode.

More immediately, the loss of trees from a forest can leave soil more prone to erosion . This causes the remaining plants to become more vulnerable to fire as the forest shifts from being a closed, moist environment to an open, dry one.

While deforestation can be permanent, this is not always the case. In North America, for example, forests in many areas are returning thanks to conservation efforts.

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Related Resources

Essay On Rainforest

Rainforests are integral to the environment, providing numerous benefits. Deforestation, or the loss of rainforests, can have disastrous consequences for both the environment and people.

Rainforests play a vital role in the global environment. They help regulate the Earth’s climate and are home to an estimated 50% of all life on Earth. Rainforests also provide a number of resources that are essential to humans, including food, medicine, and timber.

Deforestation is a major problem in many parts of the world. It is estimated that approximately 1/3 of all rainforest has been lost due to deforestation. Deforestation can have devastating effects on the environment. It contributes to climate change, increases greenhouse gas emissions, and destroys vital habitats.

Deforestation also has serious consequences for people. It can lead to soil erosion, water shortages, and loss of biodiversity. Deforestation also increases the risk of wildfires and landslides.

It is essential that we take steps to protect our rainforests. We must work to prevent deforestation and promote sustainable practices that will preserve these vital ecosystems.

The rainforests play an essential role in the world for a variety of reasons, some of which are quite basic. One major benefit is that plants in the jungle convert CO2 into clean air, allowing us to combat pollution. In addition, because the rainforests absorb carbon dioxide, they assist to prevent global warming. The trees of the rainforest store carbon dioxide in their roots, stems, branches and leaves. Rainforest animals and plants contribute food, fuel wood, shelter and employment as well as medicines to mankind.

Rainforests are home to half the world’s species of plants, animals, and insects. The Rainforest is disappearing at an alarming rate. Every day, thousands of acres of rainforest are being destroyed by loggers, miners, and farmers. The loss of the rainforest will have a devastating effect on the environment and on the people who live there.

Deforestation is the conversion of a forested area to land that is not forested. Deforestation occurs for many reasons: trees are cut down to be used as fuel or lumber, to make room for pastures or crops, or to allow for urbanization. Deforestation has many negative consequences. It contributes to global warming, destroys animal habitat, and decreases biodiversity. Additionally, deforestation can lead to soil erosion, which can cause rivers and lakes to become polluted.

Deforestation also decreases the amount of carbon dioxide that is absorbed by trees. This can lead to an increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and contribute to global warming. Rainforests are a vital part of our planet’s ecosystem, and their destruction will have devastating consequences for the environment and for humanity. We must work together to stop deforestation and protect the rainforests.

“If you clear a forest, it provides greater economic wealth in every respect than if it were unharmed. Deforestation, on the other hand, continues at an alarming rate. ‘The National Forest Association of Forest Industries (1996) notes that there are approximately 4 billion hectares of forest on Earth, with about 25% located in tropical rainforest.’

The rainforest is home to a rich variety of plants and animals, many of which are unique to the region. Many of these species have incredible medicinal properties; however, there is only one known cure for some ailments, which come from species in the rainforest.

Rainforest also play a huge role in stabilizing the climate and preventing erosion. They are an important carbon sink, soaking up billions of metric tons of carbon dioxide every year. Rainforests also produce nearly 20% of the world’s oxygen supply. Despite all these benefits, rainforest are being destroyed at a rate of about 13 million hectares per year – that is, an area the size of Costa Rica or Panama is cleared every year (Tropical Rainforest Coalition, 1996).

The main causes for this destruction are conversion to agricultural land, logging, and development. The leading countries responsible for deforestation are Brazil, Indonesia, China, India and the United States. Agricultural expansion is the primary driver of deforestation in Latin America, where more than 70 percent of the original forest has already been cleared.

In Southeast Asia, industrial logging is the main cause of deforestation. In China and India, the primary drivers are infrastructure development and energy production, respectively. And in the United States, it’s mostly due to residential and commercial development ( Rainforest Relief, n.d.).

The rainforests diversity is demonstrated by the fact that in Kenya’s Kakamega Forest, a single hectare may contain between 100 and 150 distinct tree species, whereas a hectare of North American forest might only contain 10.

Rainforests play a significant role in stabilizing the Earth’s climate. “Tropical forests are responsible for approximately 28% of the world’s carbon uptake, making them one of the most important natural mechanisms for offsetting greenhouse gas emissions from human activity.

Despite their importance, rainforests around the world are under threat from deforestation. Deforestation is defined as “the conversion of a forested area to land that is not forested. ” (Deforestation, n. d. ) Rainforest deforestation can occur through natural causes such as wildfires, but more often it is the result of human activity, such as logging, agriculture, and mining. Deforestation not only destroys the rainforest, it also releases stored carbon into the atmosphere, contributing to climate change.

The world’s rainforests are disappearing at an alarming rate. “Every year, 13 million hectares of forest – an area the size of Greece – are lost. That is equivalent to 48 football fields every minute” (Rainforest Facts, n. d. ). The loss of rainforests contributes significantly to global warming and climate change. Rainforests are one of the Earth’s most important natural resources, and it is critical that we take steps to protect them.

The bulk of the nutrients in a rainforest, which is typically 80 percent, remain in the trees and plants. The water from the forest is recirculated by evaporation. Clouds over the canopy of the forest reflect sunlight back into space, keeping temperatures inside the jungle more constant. Rainforests take a long time to grow back, but younger forests are better at removing carbon from the air than older ones. Forests that are older absorb less carbon but have larger overall quantities of carbon stored within them.

Rainforests are vital to the environment because they help to regulate climate, provide oxygen, and house a high level of biodiversity. Deforestation is the clear-cutting of trees in an area where forest once thrived. Deforestation can refer to the natural loss of trees, as well as the potential destruction of forests due to the practices of people. Deforestation has many severe consequences for global climate, human health, and environmental conservation.

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Tropical Rain Forest

The tropical rain forest is a forest with tall trees in a region of year-round high temperatures where an average of 50 to 260 inches of rain falls yearly. This article briefly shares important facts on the Rainforests. 

Aspirants would find this article very helpful while preparing for the IAS Exam .

Rain forests belong to the tropical wet climate group. The temperature in a rain forest rarely gets higher than 34 °C or drops below 20 °C, average humidity is between 77 and 88%. Rainfall is often more than 100 inches a year. There is usually a brief season of less rain. Almost all rain forests lie near the equator.

Rainforests now cover less than 6% of Earth’s land surface. Scientists estimate that more than half of the world’s plant and animal species live in tropical rain forests and tropical rainforests produce 40% of Earth’s oxygen. A tropical rain forest has more kinds of trees than any other area in the world. Scientists have counted about 100 to 300 species. Seventy per cent of the plants in the rainforest are trees. About 1/4 of all the medicines we use come from the rainforest.

All tropical rain forests are similar. Many of the trees have straight trunks that don’t branch out. The majority of the trees have a smooth, thin bark because there is no need to protect them from water loss and freezing temperatures. It also makes it difficult for plant parasites to get a hold on the trunks. The bark of different species is so similar that it is difficult to identify a tree by its bark. Many trees can only be identified by their flowers

Each of the three largest rainforests–American, African, and Asian has a different group of animal and plant species. Each rain forest has many species of monkeys, all of which differ from the species of the other two rain forests. Also, different areas of the same rain forest have different species. Many kinds of trees that grow in the mountains of the Amazon rain forest do not grow in the lowlands.

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Aspirants can find complete information about upcoming  Government Exams  through the linked article. UPSC exam-related preparation materials will be found through the links given below.

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