The African Savanna

I will first list trees there are pines,oak,maple,elm trees, evergreen spruce, fir,and the deciduous larch. Second I will list plants Blue Bead lily,Goldthread,and Pearly Everlasting.

Every forest has a story to tell. By looking closely at its habitants, that story can be interpreted. Much of this narrative is written in the trees: their age, their tolerance to shade, and the rate at which they grow are all characteristics that can imply a lot about their environment. Exploring these relationships and how they connect with each other can indicate the health and history of the land. Heiberg Forest, located in northern New York, was once used for agricultural purposes in the 1800-1900’s. (Nowak, Lecture Notes) Much of the land once used for farming was left to regrow back into a young forest. The life history of different tree species can be determined by examining the most common species in Heiberg.

Since this has a lot of agriculture, there are many animals in this landform such as deer, elk, wolves, and antelope. These animals are depending on these trees to breathe and survive in the interior plains, to give the humans and other animals oxygen. The plants living in the Interior Plains do not follow the photosynthesis cycle! They actually inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. So even the plants are depending on the trees to get oxygen! During the winter, the Interior Plains turn into a tundra landscape. When the area turns into a tundra, the plants die. This means the herbivores have nothing to eat, so they have to eat the parts of the trees like

The Northern Uplands is located along the northern boarder of the country. With an elevation of about 2,500 miles above sea level it is covered mainly savannas and grassland with scattered trees.

Angola, formerly Portuguese West Africa, is the seventh largest country in Africa. The country can be divided into three major regions: the coastal plain, a transition zone, and the vast inland plateau. Angola has a tropical climate with its vegetation including tropical rain forests, savannas, grasslands, palm trees and even deserts. A great variety of animal life ranging from elephants, rhinoceros, giraffes, and even crocodiles can also be found in this African country (Microsoft 1).

The ground cover consisted of graminoids, low shrubs, plant litter and mosses. What is to be expected after a low intensity burn is for the ground cover to act as a fuel and be dramatically reduced, while the canopy mostly survives. Higher intensity burns act to destroy the acacia cover along with the ground cover, and to kill the eucalypts. Both trees have survival mechanisms however. The acacias have tolerant seedlings that are triggered to grow after a fire to replace the short lived adults (Maslin, 2001). Eucalypts instead tolerate the fire, using lignotubers and epicormic buds to recover from within the dead tree. Lignotubers act as a hardy nutrient storage at the base of the trunk that can sprout new stems after a fire, while the epicormic buds on the trunk and branches allow the tree to continue growth from the dead trunk (Drake et al

The acacia tree has a natural fire resistance tendency so when the fire season starts they will come out of it unharmed. The animals have adaptations that are meant for surviving the hot weather and little water or hunting or camouflage. The african elephant for example has big ears that have veins in them so when he waves them they cool him down. The zebra for another example has stripes, the zebra then uses its stripes to blend in with a pack of zebras to camouflage themselves. Cheetahs have running abilities that can reach up to 60 miles and hour. They use this speed to hunt and catch their prey all of these adaptations help the animals and plants survive the

Africa is broken up into the three relatively isolated parts which include north, central, and south (Source 4, emailed chart). The north is a vast desert which has tough weather conditions, it is hard to plant crops.. The central is where much of thee rainforest in the continent grows. The south is seen to have the best weather out of the three parts, however it still very isolated except by sea, though once there only has minor obstacles making it hard to get around. The bad weather conditions also made it very hard to store food in the rainforests, the humidity causing rot (Source 4).

One example is the Texas redbud, it blooms in early spring with a lovely magenta hue found in its leaves. They usually grow to be small trees or as multi-trunked shrubs growing to a height of 15-20 feet. Another plant would be the shrubby boneset which is a type of shrub that grows 2-6 feet tall with small white flowers appearing in fuzzy clusters on the much-branched stems coming from the base. A succulent example is the twisted leaf yucca, its name comes from its leaves, though the leaves are sprouted straight, they become twisted with age over time. It has flowering stalks that often grow over 5 feet tall bearing bundles of bell shaped white flowers, sprouting from April to June.

They hardly do not have trees because the geographical area is slightly above tree line. No much oxygen is synthesized.

To see the differences of the two sites, basal area, density, species richness, and the Shannon diversity index were used. Basal area and density is the average amount of space of trees in hectares. Basal area is taken using the tree diameters while density uses the number of trees. Species richness is the number of species found. Abundance of each species is used to find the Shannon diversity index. The Sorensen similarity index compares the areas based on the number of the same species. Also, different species were looked at to find the relative basal area, relative density, and importance value of the trees. There were differences and similarities in both

Spruces, balsam firs, eastern larches and conifers dominate the forest. Trees such as aspen and birch may be in the mix as well. Needle-like leaves on trees such as the conifer (firs and pines) have minimum surface area for water loss (Berg, 2012). They also retain their needles and shed snow easily during the winter. Pinecones can be found in these forests. These contain seeds that are sometimes foraged by animals of the forest. Mosses and lichens are part of the plant life as well, and can serve as an important part of an animal’s diet in the tiaga

The African Bush elephants are found in eastern and southern Africa. Some of the areas with the highest densities of the Bush elephant is: Tanzania, South African, Kenya, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Zambia. The African Bush elephant is terrestrial. The Bush elephant usually live in the grasslands, semi-deserts and the bush lands. They also clear out forest and turn them into more of grassland, by knocking down the trees. The climate that the Bush elephant normally lives in is dry and hot. Their thin hairs and ears help them stay cool. Another way that they stay cool is that their hides become more permeable in the heat. Scientists has performed research on 13 elephants (African and Asian), they measure the release of heat and moisture. What they have found was that their skin opens up at air temperatures as low at 10°C to 12°C, this is what allows them to perspire. Elephants are different than most mammals, that sweats through glands connected to pores, elephants only have pores between their toes. Elephants do not sweat (Phillips, 1992). By all of the skin being permeable they lose more

The antelopes are especially diverse and include eland, impalas,gazelles oryx, gerenuk and kudu. Buffalo, wildebeest, plains zebra,rhinos, giraffes, elephants and warthogs are among other herbivores of the African savanna. Carnivores include lions, leopards, cheetahs,jackals, wild dogs and hyenas.

Climate: Africa contains both the world’s largest desert (the Sahara) and the world 's longest river (the Nile).Temperatures are highest in desert areas, particularly the Sahara. They are cooler across the south and in mountainous areas and plateau highlands. Rainfall varies dramatically across Africa.Changing weather patterns, however patterns of weather are changing, both locally and across the continent. The Sahara is the world 's largest low-latitude hot desert. The area is located in the horse latitudes under the subtropical ridge, a significant belt of semi-permanent subtropical, warm-core high pressure where the air from the upper levels of the troposphere tends to sink towards the ground. This steady descending airflow causes a warming and a drying effect in the upper troposphere. The sinking air prevents evaporating water from rising and, therefore, prevents the adiabatic cooling, which makes cloud formation extremely difficult to nearly impossible.