Natural Vegetation and Wildlife - Science Class 7



 

In this blog, we are going to learn about natural vegetation and wildlife on earth.

 

Tropical Evergreen Forests: These forests are also called tropical rainforests. These thick forests occur in the regions near the equator and close to the tropics. These regions are hot and receive heavy rainfall throughout the year.

 

As there is no particular dry season, the trees do not shed their leaves altogether. This is the reason they are called evergreen. The thick canopies of the closely spaced trees do not allow the sunlight to penetrate the forest even in the daytime trees like rosewood, ebony, and mahogany are common here.

 

Tropical Deciduous Forests: Tropical deciduous are the monsoon forests found in large parts of India, northern Australia, and Central America. These regions experience seasonal changes. Trees shed their leaves in the dry season to conserve water.

The hardwood trees found in these forests are sal, teak, neem, and shisham. Hardwood trees are extremely useful for making furniture, transport, and construction materials. Tigers, lions, elephants, langoors, and monkeys are the common animals of these regions.

Temperate Evergreen Forests: The temperate evergreen forests are located in the mid-latitudinal coastal region. They are commonly found along the eastern margin of the continents, e.g., In the southeast USA, South China, and southeast Brazil. They comprise both hard and softwood trees like oak, pine, eucalyptus, etc

 

Temperate Deciduous Forests: As we go towards higher latitudes, there are more temperate deciduous forests. These are found in the northeastern part of the USA, China, New Zealand, Chile, and also found in the coastal regions of Western Europe.

They shed their leaves in the dry season. The common trees are oak, ash, beech, etc. Deer, foxes, wolves are the animals commonly found. Birds like pheasants, monals are also found here.

 

GRASSLANDS

 

Tropical grasslands: These grow on either side of the equator and extend to the tropics. This vegetation grows in areas of moderate to low amount of rainfall. They can grow very tall, about 3 to 4 meters in height. Savannah grasslands of Africa are of this type. Elephants, zebras, giraffes, deer, leopards are common in tropical grasslands.

 

Temperate grasslands: These are found in the mid-latitudinal zones and in the interior part of the continents. Usually, the grass here is short and nutritious. Wild buffaloes, bison, antilopes are common in the temperate region

 

Thorny bushes: These are found in dry desert-like regions. Tropical deserts are located in the western margins of the continents. The vegetation cover is scarce here because of scanty rain and scorching heat. If you reach the polar region you will find the place extremely cold. The growth of natural vegetation and wildlife is very limited here.

Only mosses, lichens, and very small shrubs are found here. It grows during the very short summer. This is called the Tundra type of vegetation. This vegetation is found in the polar areas of Europe, Asia, and North America. The animals have thick fur and thick skin to protect themselves from the cold climatic conditions, seal, walruses, musk oxen, Arctic owl, Polar bears, and snow foxes are some of the animals found here.

 

Read More: Ganga Brahmaputra Basin - Location, Tributaries, and Ganga River - Class 7

 

Leave your comment

Open chat