| During the last ice age, the South American tropics were much drier than they are now. There was probably much less forest coverage in general in South America during that time. For example, grassland and savanna existed north of the Amazonian region, in an area where open deciduous forest grew in recent times. | The Amazon rainforest is now one of the major expanses of forest on earth. But how long has this forest been around? Not much is known about the Amazonian region during the last ice age. There is almost no question that dense tropical rainforest existed in the central Amazon basin even during the height of the ice age, but no one is sure how far that forest extended into surrounding lands. |
| Even the present rainfall patterns in the Amazon Basin are not understood completely because of large yearly fluctuation, local variations, and the lack of weather stations to record information. |
tropical regions through time -- page 1 of 3
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[tropical forests] [water] [climate]
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