®Reading Comprehension Free Practice Test HESI A2

About 6% of the earth is covered by rainforests. The largest rainforest in the world is the Amazon Basin, which stretches over 2.3 million square miles in nine different South American countries. This area is double the length of all the other remaining rainforests in the world. Brazil contains 60%of the Amazonian rainforest, since it lies at the mouth of the river Amazon. This river is the second largest in the world and contains more than one-fifth oftheworld'sfresh water. The Amazon rainforest is a type of wet broadleaf forest. The weather there is very humid and warm as it rains quite a bit. Because of the high rainfall, the forest is very rich and green. The tree leaves are pointed and narrow so that the raindrops can easily drop off wet plants. This tropical rainforest has more living species than the entire European continent. There are over 400 types of insects living in one single rain forest tree for a total of 2.5 million species. One square kilometer of rainforest may contain over 75,000 types of trees and approximately 438,000 different kinds of plants, which comes to a total of 90,000 tons of greenery overall. The Amazon rainforest is home to 2,000 birds and mammals, with one in every five birds in the world living there. Local farmers have lived off this rich and diverse land for thousands of years. They have been able to find food and water here without destroying the land. The Kayapo people of Brazil farm in an environmentally-friendly way. Instead of chemicals, they use burned wood to enrich the soil, and plant banana trees, which attract wasps. These wasps then feed on leafcutter ants and get rid of these harmful insects. The rainforest also offers a lot of tropical fruits, such as bananas and coconuts, as food. Cinnamon is made from the bark of a rainforest tree. Amazonian Indians use the fruit and stem of the Buruti plant as a drink, to make bread and to build houses. Many other plants are used as medicine. But the Amazon rainforest is in very big danger of disappearing. 9,169 square miles of forest have been cut down in 2003 in Brazil alone. An area of the size of a football field is burned down basically every minute, which means that the rain forest may be gone by the year 2030.The dangers related to this type of activity are obvious. Trees take in poisonous carbon dioxide from the air and give off oxygen. There is more oxygen and less carbon dioxide around a rainforest. When trees are cut down, however, the amount of carbon dioxide increases, and the air gets warmer. This leads to global warming, which is extremely harmful to the environment. It is estimated that the burning of Brazilian rainforests alone produces 200 million metric tons of carbon dioxide ayear. Another danger connected with destroying the rainforest is the disappearance of plants and animals. When trees are cut down, plants and animals have no more food left and slowly die out. Killing wild animals is illegal in Brazil, but there is plenty of stealing going on. 38 million animals are stolen and sold illegally each year. The most hunted animals are birds, especially parrots, followed by snakes and the jaguar.