Unit 20: Climate, Soil, Plants, and Animals

• Natural Geography

• Pedology

• Biogeography

• Phytogeography

• Zoogeography

OBJECTIVES• Expand our concept of physical geography by including biotic systems operating at Earth’s surface• Understand the importance of physical geography to the problem of conservation and the global carbon cycle• Summarize the global cycle of carbon and the important role of biosphere processes in that cycle

Leaf litter on the forest floor-source of vital nutrients for the living plants.

Soil formation

Profile of mature soil whose structure developed over thousands of years.

Vegetation boundaries in Alaska, with taiga forest changing to tundra-note the treeline where forests end part way up the slopes of mountains.

Vegetation Boundaries

Soil Erosion

Agricultural practices have not stopped erosion here in Kenya where cropping on steep terrain has led to gullying. Similar extensive cropping and grazing have led to desertification.

Acid Rain Attacks Fragile Forests

Pollution from nearby factories create acid rain leading to needle loss and tree mortality in the Black Forest of SW Germany.

Soil Erosion During Dust Bowl of the 1930s

Large dust storm buries town of Springfield in eastern Colorado during height of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Although conservation practices were soon adopted, dust storms returned in the 1950s and again in the late 1970s.

Sustainable Development

which the World Commission on Environment and Development defines as “development

that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future

generations to meet their own needs.”

Problems that need to be addressed to conserve our flora and fauna:• population• poverty