Tropical rainforests grow in a belt around the equator, roughly between the Tropic of Cancer (23.5°N) and the Tropic of Capricorn (23.5°S). They cluster on three continents: South America, Africa, and Asia, with smaller patches in Central America, the Pacific Islands, and northern Australia. Together, these forests form the most biologically dense ecosystems on Earth, driven by intense heat, heavy rainfall, and a year-round growing season.
The Three Major Rainforest Regions
The world’s tropical rainforests are concentrated in three broad zones, each centered on a major river basin or archipelago.
The Amazon basin in South America is the largest by far. Brazil alone contains roughly 5.3 million square kilometers of tropical forest, more than the next four countries combined. The Amazon rainforest stretches across nine countries, including Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia, covering an area roughly the size of the contiguous United States. Smaller but significant rainforests also exist along Central America’s Caribbean coast and in parts of southern Mexico.
Central Africa holds the second-largest block. The Congo basin rainforest spreads across the Democratic Republic of the Congo (about 1.35 million square kilometers of tropical forest), the Republic of the Congo, Cameroon, Gabon, and Equatorial Guinea. Angola, further south, has nearly 700,000 square kilometers of tropical forest. West African nations like Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, and Nigeria once had extensive rainforest cover, though much of it has been cleared for agriculture.
Southeast Asia’s rainforests are scattered across thousands of islands and mainland peninsulas. Indonesia holds about 1.05 million square kilometers of tropical forest, spread across Borneo, Sumatra, Java, and smaller islands. The Philippines, peninsular Malaysia, and parts of Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam all contain tropical rainforest. Australia also qualifies, with about 834,000 square kilometers of tropical forest concentrated in the northeast, primarily in Queensland.
Why Rainforests Form Where They Do
Location alone doesn’t create a rainforest. What matters is a combination of consistent warmth and enormous amounts of rain. Tropical rainforests average between 21 and 30°C (70 to 85°F) year-round, with minimal seasonal temperature swings. Annual rainfall ranges from 200 to 1,000 centimeters (roughly 80 to 400 inches), far exceeding what most other ecosystems receive.
The engine behind this rainfall is a weather system called the Intertropical Convergence Zone, or ITCZ. This is a band of low pressure that wraps around the equator where trade winds from the Northern and Southern Hemispheres collide, forcing warm, moist air upward. As that air rises, it cools and dumps massive amounts of rain. The ITCZ shifts north and south with the seasons, which is why some tropical rainforests experience slightly wetter and drier periods rather than the four-season cycle of temperate climates. Geography and topography also shape where rain falls: the widening of the Atlantic Ocean basin over millions of years helped develop the ITCZ pattern that sustains both the Amazon and Congo rainforests today.
Lowland vs. Montane Rainforests
Not all tropical rainforests sit at sea level. Lowland rainforests, the classic image of towering canopy trees and dense undergrowth, generally grow from sea level up to roughly 1,000 to 1,200 meters in elevation. Above that, conditions shift. Temperatures drop, clouds settle in, and the forest transitions into what’s called montane or cloud forest, with shorter trees draped in mosses and ferns.
The exact boundary between lowland and montane forest varies by location. In the Caribbean and Southeast Asia, the transition happens around 910 meters. In West Africa, it occurs closer to 1,200 meters. In South America and New Guinea, forests can remain lowland in character up to 1,400 or even 1,800 meters. This happens because large mountain ranges retain heat more effectively than isolated peaks, pushing the transition zone higher. Cloud forests are found along the Andes, in East Africa’s highlands, and across mountainous parts of Borneo and New Guinea.
How Much Rainforest Remains
Tropical rainforests once covered a much larger share of the land near the equator. Today, deforestation is accelerating. 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 about 18 soccer fields of old-growth forest disappearing every minute, nearly double the rate in 2023. Overall, tropical primary forest loss jumped 80% in a single year.
Fire was a major driver, but not the only one. Primary forest loss unrelated to fire also rose 14% between 2023 and 2024, mostly from clearing land for agriculture. Nicaragua’s Bosawás Biosphere Reserve, one of Central America’s largest remaining rainforests, lost 74,000 hectares, with fires responsible for about 40% of the damage. Global tree cover loss across all forest types hit 30 million hectares in 2024, the highest figure ever recorded.
Brazil and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, home to the two largest remaining rainforest blocks, face the most intense pressure. Indonesia has made some progress in slowing deforestation in recent years, though palm oil expansion and mining continue to erode forest cover across Borneo and Sumatra.
Key Countries by Tropical Forest Area
- Brazil: 5.33 million sq km (2.06 million sq miles)
- Democratic Republic of the Congo: 1.35 million sq km (521,800 sq miles)
- Indonesia: 1.05 million sq km (405,200 sq miles)
- Australia: 834,000 sq km (322,000 sq miles)
- Angola: 697,000 sq km (269,200 sq miles)
These five countries account for the bulk of the world’s remaining tropical forest. Dozens of other nations contribute smaller but ecologically vital patches, from Papua New Guinea and Madagascar to Colombia, Peru, and the island nations of the western Pacific.