Human element
About 120 million Brazilians (70% of the population) drink mineral water which comes from natural springs and rivers of the Atlantic Forest. Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Belo Horizonte, Fortaleza and Salvador receive water through the Atlantic Forest and they are within the Atlantic Forest biome.
Freshwater
The forest is the source of the cycle. The water contains dissolved nutrients from the soil which is needed by the plants that are the basis of the food chain. The forest with its various components (leaves, logs, grass, plants, soil and roots) acts like a powerful sponge, retaining the rain, filtering, purifying, and slowly releasing both by evaporation creating new rain, and for progressive release in to the rivers. Only one quarter of the precipitation falling on the earth originated by seas and the remaining three quarters of the precipitation is due to green plants. A birch tree can lose through evaporation between 60 to 400 litres of water a day if it is particularly hot. It is a lot cheaper to maintain and protect forests than to build and maintain purifiers to purify polluted water or desalinate and purify the sea, once the water cycle has been interrupted.
The Atlantic Forest returns 70% of rain water it receives. It’s a highly productive source of pure mineral water, more productive than the Amazon Forest, which returns 50% of rain.
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