What is the world's largest rainforest by area?

The world’s largest rainforest by area is the Amazon rainforest. It stretches across roughly 5.5 million square kilometres in South America and forms the largest tropical rainforest system on Earth.

Most of the Amazon lies in Brazil, but the forest also extends into Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana. The Amazon River and its thousands of tributaries drain an enormous basin, carrying water toward the Atlantic Ocean. This river network helps create the humid conditions that support the forest’s extraordinary biological richness.

The Amazon is often called the “lungs of the Earth,” but that phrase can mislead. The forest produces oxygen through photosynthesis, yet most of that oxygen is consumed by respiration and decomposition within the ecosystem. Its more important global roles include storing carbon, recycling moisture and influencing regional rainfall.

The Congo Basin is the world’s second-largest tropical rainforest, while Southeast Asian rainforests are also extensive but smaller. Daintree is famous and ancient, but it is only a small rainforest in northeastern Australia.