Rainforests exist on every continent except Antarctica, clustered in two broad categories: tropical rainforests near the equator and temperate rainforests along cool, wet coastlines farther from it. Most people picture the Amazon, but rainforests span dozens of countries across South America, Africa, Southeast Asia, Australia, North America, and even pockets of Europe.
What Makes a Rainforest a Rainforest
A rainforest needs two things: warmth and enormous amounts of rain. Tropical rainforests receive between 2,000 and 10,000 millimeters of rainfall per year (roughly 79 to 394 inches), with average daily temperatures between 20°C and 25°C (68°F to 77°F). They stay frost-free year-round. Temperate rainforests are cooler but still extraordinarily wet, found along coastlines where ocean moisture feeds near-constant precipitation. Both types develop dense, layered canopies and support exceptional biodiversity, but they look and feel quite different from each other.
The Amazon Basin
The Amazon is the largest tropical rainforest on Earth, covering roughly 6.7 million square kilometers across eight countries and one overseas territory: Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana. Brazil holds the majority. More than 30 million people live within this region, including hundreds of Indigenous communities whose territories span the forest’s interior.
The Amazon alone accounts for about half of the world’s remaining tropical rainforest. Its river system is the largest by volume anywhere, and its canopy produces so much moisture through evaporation that it generates its own weather patterns, recycling rainfall hundreds of kilometers inland.
The Congo Basin
Central Africa’s Congo Basin is the second-largest tropical rainforest, covering about 3.3 million square kilometers, an area roughly the size of India. Six countries share it: Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the Republic of Congo. Of these, the DRC holds the largest share by far.
The Congo Basin’s forested area totals about 2.8 million square kilometers, making it the most intact large tropical forest after the Amazon. It’s less well-known internationally but plays an outsized role in global climate regulation, storing vast quantities of carbon in its trees and the peat-rich soils beneath them.
Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands
Tropical rainforests in Southeast Asia are scattered across thousands of islands and a few mainland peninsulas. The island of Borneo, shared by Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei, hosts one of the region’s largest continuous tracts. Sumatra, entirely within Indonesia, holds another major block. Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam all contain smaller mainland rainforest areas, though many have been heavily logged.
Papua New Guinea and parts of the Philippines round out the region’s significant forest cover. Southeast Asian rainforests are among the most biodiverse per square kilometer anywhere, partly because the islands have been isolated long enough for unique species to evolve independently on each one.
Australia’s Ancient Rainforests
Australia’s Daintree Rainforest in far north Queensland has been growing for more than 180 million years, making it the oldest tropical rainforest on Earth. It sits along the coast between Cairns and Cape Tribulation, where the canopy reaches right to the edge of the Great Barrier Reef. Beyond the Daintree, smaller tropical and subtropical rainforest patches extend along Queensland’s wet tropics coast and into parts of New South Wales.
Australia also has temperate rainforest in Tasmania and Victoria’s Otway Ranges, where cool, wet conditions support ancient tree ferns and moss-covered southern beech trees.
Temperate Rainforests Around the World
Not all rainforests are hot. Temperate rainforests grow along foggy, rain-soaked coastlines at higher latitudes, and they’re rarer than their tropical counterparts. The largest remaining examples sit along the Pacific coast of North America, stretching from southern Oregon through Washington State and British Columbia into southeast Alaska. Olympic National Park in Washington protects some of the best-preserved stands, with the Quinault, Hoh, and Bogachiel river valleys receiving enough rainfall to sustain towering old-growth conifers draped in moss.
Southern Chile holds another major belt of temperate rainforest, known as the Valdivian forest, which extends down the western slopes of the Andes. New Zealand’s South Island, particularly Fiordland, supports temperate rainforest fed by moisture from the Tasman Sea. And in the British Isles, fragments of Atlantic temperate rainforest survive along western coasts. These once covered large stretches of Wales, western Scotland, the Lake District, Dartmoor, and parts of Northern Ireland. Today only isolated patches remain in places like the Scottish Highlands, Ceredigion and Gwynedd in Wales, and the glacial valleys of Antrim.
Cloud Forests at High Elevations
A specialized type of tropical rainforest grows on mountainsides between about 1,000 and 2,500 meters elevation. These montane cloud forests are almost permanently wrapped in mist, which provides moisture beyond what falls as rain. They’re found in Central America (Guatemala’s Sierra Yalijux range is one example), the Andes, East Africa’s Virunga Mountains, and highland areas of Southeast Asia. Cloud forests tend to be shorter and more gnarled than lowland rainforests, with every surface covered in mosses, orchids, and ferns. They’re critically important as water sources for communities living downhill, since the trees capture moisture directly from clouds and channel it into streams.
How Fast Rainforests Are Shrinking
The map of global rainforests is not static. In 2024, the tropics lost a record 6.7 million hectares of primary rainforest, an area nearly the size of Panama. That works out to roughly 18 soccer fields of old-growth forest disappearing every minute, nearly double the rate in 2023. Much of the 2024 spike was driven by fire, but even setting fires aside, forest loss from agricultural conversion rose 14% year over year.
The regions hardest hit shift from year to year, but the Amazon, the Congo Basin, and Southeast Asia consistently account for the bulk of losses. Indonesia and Malaysia have seen some slowing of deforestation in recent years due to policy changes, while parts of the Amazon and Central Africa have accelerated. The practical effect is that the boundaries of where rainforests exist are contracting, particularly at the edges where forest meets farmland.