March 28, 2024

Daintree: A Rainforest Like No Other – With a Vast Range of Unique Species

September 5, 2019
The Daintree region of Queensland, Australia, is house to among the worlds earliest forests and hosts a large variety of special types.
There are few other places like Daintree rainforest in far north Queensland. Thought to be among the most ancient forests on the planet, Daintree has lots of plants with lineages that scientists have traced back numerous countless years to a time when a number of continents were joined together as Gondwana. All 7 of the worlds earliest surviving fern species can still be found in Daintree, as well as 12 of the worlds 19 most primitive blooming plants.
On September 5, 2019, the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 caught this natural-color picture of part of the rainforest. The high escarpments and peaks of the Great Dividing Range play an essential role in fueling the rain in Daintree. As moisture-laden winds blow in from the Coral Sea, orographic lifting presses air up and over the mountains. In the procedure, water vapor cools, forms clouds, and produces rain. Typically, higher-elevation parts of the rainforest get more rain, particularly on the eastern slopes of mountains.

Many of the species discovered in Daintree are special to the location. For the 40 million years considering that Australia broke from the Gondwana, evolutionary procedures have hummed along in geographic seclusion, yielding uncommon types of animals such as monotremes and marsupials.
Among the birds is the threatened southern cassowary– a big, flightless ratite with a blue head, 2 red wattles, and a distinct dinosaur-like bony casque on its head. Cassowaries, the third biggest kind of bird on the planet, have the practical practice of distributing and seeding a minimum of 70 different kinds of trees as they forage for fallen fruit.
In September 2021, the Queensland federal government returned ownership of Daintree National Park to the Eastern Kuku Yalanji, an indigenous group that has actually had a presence in Australias jungles for a minimum of 50,000 years. Daintree, Ngalba-bulal, Kalkajaka and the Hope Islands national forests are managed jointly by the Eastern Kuku Yalanji individuals and the Queensland Government because the handover.
NASA Earth Observatory image by Joshua Stevens, utilizing Landsat information from the U.S. Geological Survey.

There are couple of other places like Daintree jungle in far north Queensland. All seven of the worlds oldest surviving fern species can still be found in Daintree, as well as 12 of the worlds 19 most primitive flowering plants.
Numerous of the types found in Daintree are special to the location.