Essays on Natural Vegetation

Introduction

Human activity on the natural resources causes threats to the land sustainability either directly or indirectly. This paper examines soil erosion, genetically modified grains and overpopulation as the main threats to land sustainability.

Soil erosion and how it impacts the global food supply

Soil erosion is the washing away of the earth’s topsoil by agents such as wind and rainwater, and it occurs mainly due to human activities. Agriculture is the primary cause of soil erosion. When people clear natural vegetation to create framing fields, the topsoil is exposed to erosion agents such as the wind. Deforestation is also a leading contributor of soil erosion. As people cut ...

Biomes/natural Vegetation: Needle-leaf Evergreen Forests

Needle-leaf evergreen forests are largely comprised of straight trunked, conical shaped trees that have comparatively shorter branches with narrow and small needle like leaves. These forests are composed of conifers predominantly. Where the needle-leaf forests are evergreen, they provide continuous deep shade to the ground, therefore, the lower layers of vegetation are either absent or sparse (Veregin 2005). Only a thick carpet of mosses can be found below the needle-leaf biome. There are very few species that can be found, however the large tracts of the vegetation have one or two species. According to the World Vegetation Map, this ...

The correlation between climate and vegetation is evident in Africa, where, despite the rapid destruction of natural vegetation by humans and animals, there are still vast areas of natural vegetation. There are two main zones in Sub-Saharan Africa.

AREAS OF EQUATORIAL FOREST

The rainforests cover just under 1000 km in latitude and approximately 2250 km from west to east, from the Cameroon coast and Gabon to the eastern borders of Congo - Kinshasa (to the mountains flanking the Rift Valley to the Ruwenzori, the Virunga Mountains and Ugoma (northwest of Lake Tanganyika). The equatorial forest has a wide variety of trees (very high ...