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Climatically stable rain forest
Tropical lowland rain forest is highly dependent on sufficient rainfall evently distributed over the year, i.e. without a significant dry season. A critical drop in rainfall or lengthing of the dry season will cause the forest to change, gradually or dramatically depending on the severity of the change (the latter often associated with humain induced fires). A gradual change in climate causes humid rain forest to become monsoon or decidious forest and eventually it will be replaced by shrub and grassland. A dramatic change is ussually caused by fire when the dried out rain forest burns and the closed-canopy rain forest is reduced to a forest savanna mosaic(e.g. during El Nino events in Indonesia).

The amount and annual distribution of rainfall at the equator has varied regularly due to natural causes related to orbital forcing, continental drift and most recently due to humain socio-economic development. During periods with a drier climatic regime some of the rain forest would disapear first at the edge and progressively inward.