Vegetation of the Other Continents – Vegetation of Africa and the World (Senior 3 Geography) | Ganzaa

Vegetation of Africa and the World

Lessons

Senior 3 · Geography

Vegetation of Africa and the World

4 lessons

Lesson 2 of 4

Vegetation of the Other Continents

25 min

Let's begin

Stand on a hillside in Corsica, in California or near Cape Town in summer and the view looks much the same: dense, grey-green, knee-to-head-high scrub that smells of resin, dry ground, and hardly a tall tree. Most of the plants belong to different species, yet the same climate, wet winters and dry summers, has shaped them into the same form. That is the key to the world's vegetation: similar climates produce similar vegetation, wherever they occur. Once you know Africa's belts, you already know half the world's.

Definition

Biome: a very large area of the Earth with one main type of vegetation and the animals that live in it, shaped by one type of climate. Example: the tropical rainforest biome includes the Congo Basin, the Amazon Basin and the forests of Indonesia.

Tropical vegetation outside Africa

Tropical rainforest covers the Amazon Basin (the largest rainforest on Earth), Central America, Indonesia, Malaysia and New Guinea. It has the same layers, buttresses, lianas and hardwoods as the Congo forest, but different species: rubber trees and Brazil nuts in the Amazon, tall dipterocarps in Borneo.
Monsoon forest grows in India, Myanmar and Thailand, where a very wet summer monsoon is followed by a long dry season. Many trees, such as teak and sal, are deciduous and stand bare before the rains. Bamboo is common.
Tropical grassland (savanna) outside Africa has local names: the llanos of Venezuela and Colombia, the campos and cerrado of Brazil, and the grasslands of northern Australia.
Hot desert vegetation grows in the Arabian, Thar, Atacama and Australian deserts and in the south-west of the USA, where tall cacti store water in their stems.

Mediterranean vegetation

Five regions share the Mediterranean climate: the lands around the Mediterranean Sea, California, central Chile, south-western and southern Australia, and the south-western Cape. All carry evergreen trees and shrubs with small, hard, waxy leaves. The scrub has a different name in each: maquis and the lower, more open garrigue around the Mediterranean, chaparral in California, matorral in Chile, mallee in Australia and fynbos at the Cape. Cork oak, olive and pines are typical of the Mediterranean lands, eucalyptus of Australia.

Temperate vegetation

Temperate deciduous forest is the natural vegetation of western and central Europe, the eastern USA, north-eastern China and Japan, where summers are warm and winters cool or cold. Oak, beech, ash and maple shed their broad leaves in autumn, so that frozen ground in winter does not dry them out. The trees are hardwoods and grow in fairly pure stands. Most of this forest has long been cleared for farms and towns. Where it meets the taiga, conifers and broadleaves grow together in a mixed forest.
Temperate grasslands lie deep inside the continents, where rain is moderate and falls mainly in summer, and winters are cold. Short and tall grasses grow, with almost no trees. They are the prairies of North America, the steppes of Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan, the pampas of Argentina and Uruguay, the downs of Australia and, in Africa, the veld. Their deep, black chernozem soils (Unit 3) make them some of the world's great wheat and maize lands.

Cold vegetation

Coniferous forest (taiga or boreal forest) stretches across Canada, Alaska, Scandinavia and Russia, south of the Arctic. It is the largest land biome on Earth. Winters are long and very cold; summers are short and cool. Pine, spruce, fir and larch dominate. Their small needle leaves, covered in wax, lose little water when the soil is frozen; most stay on all year, so the tree can start growing the moment spring arrives; and the conical shape lets snow slide off without breaking the branches. Trees of one or two species grow together in large pure stands, and their softwood is easy to cut and float, so the taiga supplies most of the world's timber, pulp and paper.
Tundra lies north of the taiga, around the Arctic Ocean, and above the tree line on high mountains. Summers are too short and cold for trees. Mosses, lichens, grasses and dwarf willows and birches grow low to the ground, out of the wind, in a growing season of only about 50 to 60 days. Below the surface the ground is frozen all year.
Mountain vegetation in the Andes, the Rockies, the Alps and the Himalayas changes with height in belts, as on Africa's high mountains: deciduous or tropical forest at the foot, conifers higher up, then alpine meadows, then bare rock and snow.

Figure 3: tree forms match climates. Drawn by Ganzaa.

Definition

Coniferous: describes trees that bear cones and usually have needle-shaped, evergreen leaves, such as pine and spruce. Their wood is called softwood. Taiga: the belt of coniferous forest across the cold northern lands of North America, Europe and Asia.

Definition

Tundra: the treeless plain of the cold Arctic lands, with mosses, lichens and dwarf shrubs. Permafrost: ground that stays frozen for at least two years in a row; in the tundra only the top layer thaws in summer. Example: the tundra of northern Canada and Siberia.

Definition

Temperate grassland: a treeless grassland in the interior of a mid-latitude continent, with warm summers, cold winters and moderate rain. Examples: the prairies, the steppes and the pampas.

Geodiode: The Taiga Biome (Boreal Forest). Watch for where the taiga lies, why conifers suit its long winters, and where it gives way to tundra in the north.

Worked example

Worked example 1: from climate data to vegetation. Unit 4 gave these 1991–2020 averages. Name the natural vegetation of each station.

Station	Mean temperature	Yearly rainfall
Manaus, Brazil (3°S)	27.4 °C, hot all year	2,362.4 mm
London, UK (51.5°N)	11.7 °C, mild winter	614.9 mm, all year
Moscow, Russia (55.8°N)	6.3 °C, coldest month −6.2 °C	711.7 mm
Resolute, Canada (74.7°N)	−15.1 °C	163.9 mm

Manaus: hot and very wet all year, so tropical rainforest (the Amazon).
London: mild, moderate rain in every season, so temperate deciduous forest (oak, ash and beech, now mostly cleared).
Moscow: warm summer but freezing winter, so mixed forest, where deciduous trees meet the conifers of the taiga.
Resolute: far too cold for trees and very dry, so the sparsest tundra: scattered mosses, lichens and cushion plants.

Worked example

Worked example 2: compare savanna and temperate grassland. Give two similarities and three differences between the savanna of East Africa and the prairies of North America.

Similarities: both are dominated by grasses; both have a dry season or a dry spell, and both have been burnt and grazed for thousands of years.
Location: savanna lies in the tropics (roughly 5° to 20° from the Equator); prairies lie in the middle latitudes (about 35° to 55°N), deep inside the continent.
Temperature: savanna is hot all year; the prairies have hot summers and very cold winters, with snow.
Trees: savanna always has scattered trees such as acacias; natural prairie has almost none, except along rivers.

Warning

Do not mix up taiga and tundra. Both are cold and northern, but taiga is forest and tundra is treeless. Also, "softwood" and "hardwood" name the tree type, not the hardness of the wood: conifers give softwood, broad-leaved trees give hardwood.

Tip

T and T. Taiga has Trees; Tundra is Treeless. Going north from Europe, the order is deciduous forest, mixed forest, taiga, tundra, ice, the same order you meet climbing a high mountain.

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Practice

Define a biome.
Name the temperate grassland of (a) Argentina, (b) Kazakhstan, (c) North America.
Name two regions outside Africa with Mediterranean vegetation, and give the local name of the scrub in each.
Give three ways in which coniferous trees are adapted to the taiga climate.
Why are there no trees in the tundra?
Why is the taiga easier to exploit for timber than the tropical rainforest?
A station at 60°N has a mean July temperature of 16 °C, a mean January temperature of −20 °C and 500 mm of rain. Name its natural vegetation and justify your answer.
"Similar climates produce similar vegetation." Evaluate this statement, using one example that supports it and one feature that differs between two such regions.

Show answersHide answers

A very large area with one main type of vegetation and its animals, shaped by one type of climate, e.g. the tropical rainforest biome.
(a) pampas; (b) steppe; (c) prairie.
Any two: lands around the Mediterranean Sea (maquis or garrigue); California (chaparral); central Chile (matorral); southern Australia (mallee).
Needle leaves with wax lose little water when the soil is frozen; they are evergreen, so growth starts at once in the short summer; the conical shape sheds snow; flexible branches bend without breaking.
The summer is too short and cool for trees to grow, the soil below is permanently frozen (permafrost), so roots cannot go deep, and strong winds dry out anything that stands tall.
Taiga trees grow in large pure stands of one or two species, so they can be cut in bulk; the softwood is light and easy to saw and float; frozen ground in winter makes hauling easy. Rainforest trees of one species are scattered among many others.
Coniferous forest (taiga): the summer is warm enough for trees (16 °C), but the winter is very long and cold (−20 °C), so only conifers, adapted to frozen soil and snow, can survive.
Supported: the Mediterranean climate gives evergreen, small-leaved scrub in Corsica, California, Chile, Australia and the Cape. But the species differ (eucalyptus in Australia, cork oak around the Mediterranean, proteas at the Cape), and people have changed each region differently. A strong answer agrees with the general rule and notes that the species, and the human impact, vary.

Sources and credits

Map: Vegetation (the main biomes of the world), Ville Koistinen, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
Photo: Maquis and garrigue in Corsica, Sten Porse, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
Photo: Astana steppe, Vmenkov, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
Photo: Taiga and bedrock in Yellowknife, Daniel Case, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
Video: The Taiga Biome (Boreal Forest) - Biomes #7, Geodiode, embedded from YouTube.
Taiga, Tundra, Temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands and Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub: Wikipedia contributors, Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0, adapted by Ganzaa.
Station figures in Worked example 1: WMO Climatological Standard Normals for 1991–2020, NOAA NCEI, as used in Unit 4.
Figure 3 (tree forms), explanations, worked examples and exercises: written and drawn by Ganzaa.

This lesson adapts CC BY-SA material and is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.

1Tropical vegetation outside Africa

2Mediterranean vegetation

3Temperate vegetation

4Cold vegetation

Tropical vegetation outside Africa

Mediterranean vegetation

Temperate vegetation

Cold vegetation