Amazon forest spanning across Brazil, Peru, Columbia and other South American countries is the world’s ___________ forest.

a. Largest

b. Second Largest

c. Third Largest

d. Fourth Largest

ANSWER: Largest

Explanation:

Amazon forest spanning across Brazil, Columbia, Peru and other South American countries is the world’s largest forest covering 5.5 million square kilometres.

Scientists have estimated that the forest stores 100 bt of carbon in its biomass and changes can have global consequences

This forest suffered a mjor drought in 2005, then 2010

2010 drought shut down the Amazon Basin carbon sink by destroying trees and slowing growth

Amazon may be losing the capacity to take carbon from the atmosphere as a result of this

This marks the first basin wide study of the impact of the 2010 drought and its interaction with previous droughts

Using long term measurements from the RAINFOR network spanning close to 100 locations across the Amazon basin, the first and second drought were found to have temporarily lost biomass