Tropical rainforest ecology: Implications for tourism development

The aim of this chapter is to introduce readers to a number of key terms and concepts that are essential for understanding how tourism development may be undertaken in rainforest areas and identify possible impacts on long-term rainforest sustainability. Rainforests are complex biological systems and uninformed use for tourism purposes may have serious unintended consequences. For this reason, the chapter will briefly describe the distribution of rainforests, rainforest biodiversity, key ecological concepts and threats. Obviously a chapter of this nature can only provide a brief introduction to the many issues that need to be considered. For a more detailed discussion on rainforests, readers are directed to Osborne (2012), who gives a useful overview of rainforests as well as other tropical ecosystems, and Whitmore ( 1998), who provides a very detailed description of the structure and functioning of tropical rainforests.