Climate- energy interacting with water- is the average weather conditions of a place or region throughout the seasons. The two major elements measured to describe it are temperature and precipitation. There is also a recognized relationship between climate and plant growth.
So what type of natural vegetation would you expect given the following climatic data: average annual temperature is 18°C; average annual precipitation is 400 mm (40cm)? The answer is chaparral or low dense scrub and a sample location is Los Angeles.
Generalizations:
If you examine a model of the relationship between climate and plant growth (see image below) you’ll notice that there are definite vegetation categories related to temperature (forest types e.g. tundra is treeless) and precipitation (scrub e.g. grassland, savanna). You’ll also notice that the tropical section of the model (average annual temperatures of 20°C to 30°C), where heat and moisture are abundant, shows the greatest variety or diversity.
Test Yourself:
Using the model, complete the organizer (see blank image) for each of the ten cities listed. You might like to have an atlas handy. When finished, check the answers (see answers image).
Loss of Typical Natural Communities:
Now consider this fact: Tom Spears, reporting in the Ottawa Citizen, quoted scientists from the University of Leeds as saying that by the year 2050 it’s predicted that climate change could kill off a “quarter of the earth’s animals and plants.” And because neighboring lands are often used for farming, “it would not be easy for new generations of wild plants to migrate.”
“For years biologists have known that plants and animals live in predictable patterns based on climate and habitat, but now those patterns are changing in unpredictable ways”, said biologist Townsend Peterson of the University of Kansas in the Ottawa Citizen article. "We've had mosquitoes in Boston on Dec. 24th”
Areas Most Affected:
The city of Uaupes lies in the tropical scrub forest savanna in the north of Amazonas while the larger savanna or cerrado region of Brazil lies south of the rainforest. The latter savannah covers one-fifth of the country and is rich in plants- second only to the tropical rainforest in plant diversity- with about 10,000 native species. As reported by the Ottawa Citizen, the “British scientists' model shows somewhere between 1,700 and 2,100 of these plant species could be wiped out by the next few decades of warming.
World wide, reported the Ottawa Citizen, “depending on how much (the) Earth's climate warms up by 2050, the changed climate will kill between 15 and 37 per cent of land species.”
In 2006 Brian Handwerk, of the National Geographic, followed up with an article entitled, Global Warming Could Cause Mass Extinctions by 2050, a report on a NGS study similar to the 2004 investigation but using different methods. It found, however, similar results. As reported by Handwerk, biologist Terry Root, of Stanford University's Center for Environmental Science and Policy, who was not involved in the study, stated prophetically: “This is not some activity that will only be occurring 'overseas.' The likely extirpations and extinctions will also be occurring within a couple hundred miles of all of our back yards."
Sources:
- Tom Spears. Millions of Species Feeling the Heat. Ottawa Citizen. Jan. 8, 2004.
- Brian Handwerk. Global Warming Could Cause Mass Extinctions by 2050. National Geographic. Apr. 12, 2006
James Gibson - James Gibson is a retired teacher and small business owner. He is a published writer and has a wide spectrum of interests.
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