• Llabyrinthine
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    9 months ago

    I was at the Redwood Forest and I heard, “If it’s rainforest, why isn’t there any rain?”

    Cue the father saying that it’s a redwood forest, but it was the cutest thing.

    • Seagoon_OP
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      9 months ago

      TIL

      The kid was right. So what is a rainforest? Very good question. Our rainforests are not rainforests.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperate_rainforest#

      Australian definitions are ecological-structural rather than climatic:

      Closed canopy of trees excludes at least 69% of the sky. Forest is composed mainly of tree species which do not require fire for regeneration, but with seedlings able to regenerate under shade and in natural openings.[3] Australian definitions would exclude some temperate rainforests of western North America that are Coast Douglas-fir dominant, such as parts of the Klamath Mountains in southern Oregon and northern California, the Puget Lowlands of western Washington and the Georgia Depression in British Columbia,[4][5] as their dominant tree species, the Coast Douglas-fir, requires stand-destroying disturbance to initiate a new cohort of seedlings.[6] The North American definition would in turn exclude a part of temperate rainforests under definitions used elsewhere.[7]