Monsoon forest

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A monsoon forest , even Passat forest or rain green humid forest called, is the characteristic vegetation form of a summer humid monsoon climate .

Typical characteristics

A monsoon forest is composed predominantly of deciduous trees. It has two layers of trees. The upper floor is about 25 to 35 meters high. During the dry season, there is usually complete defoliation here. The shrub layer is evergreen and often streaked with bamboo.

Climatic conditions and adaptations

The occurrence of monsoon forests is linked to the characteristic monsoon climate, which is characterized by the rain-bringing summer monsoon of the equatorial west wind zone. The wind drawn over the warmed sea surface arrives at the monsoon forests, moist and warm, and brings enormous amounts of precipitation. The fallen leaves, the relatively small leaf areas and the low tree height are interpreted as an adaptation to unfavorable water conditions during the dry season.

In monsoon regions with annual rainfall below 1500 mm / yr. and longer dry periods, there are tropical / subtropical dry forests or savannas .

Differences to the vegetation type of the tropical rainforest

It differs in several ways from the other type of humid tropical forest , the tropical rainforest : It is divided into different vertical floors. However, the monsoon forest is lower overall and its canopy is thinner, which results in more pronounced undergrowth . The biodiversity inherent in a monsoon forest is noticeably lower than in a tropical rainforest. The forest floor is much drier and, in contrast to the tropical rainforest, also shows a pronounced dry period of four to five months, which, however, depends very much on the respective local conditions. As a result, monsoon forests are usually not evergreen forests as they mostly shed their leaves during this dry period. For many species, the flowering period is at the end of the dry season or at the beginning.

The species composition of the monsoon forests varies from region to region, but in some regions there are particularly characteristic species which often give the corresponding forests their nicknames. These are, for example, the sal forests of India ( sal tree ), the teak forests of Myanmar and Thailand ( teak tree ) and the eucalyptus forests of northern Australia ( eucalyptus ).

distribution

The monsoon forests on the Southeast Asian mainland and on the Indian subcontinent reached their greatest extent originally . Larger-sized monsoon forests can only be found today in India , Myanmar , Thailand and, with smaller populations, in Northern Australia . Large areas of the formerly existing stock, such as in West Africa , were extensively cleared and transferred to cultivated land, thorn savannah or anthropogenic semi-desert. The strong population growth and the associated need for firewood and land is leaving its mark in these regions. Last but not least, the great demand of the international timber market also contributes to the decline in monsoon forests.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Wolfgang Frey , Rainer Lösch : Geobotany. Plant and vegetation in space and time. 3. Edition. Spektrum Akademischer Verlag, Heidelberg 2010, ISBN 978-3-8274-2335-1 , p. 415 ff.
  2. ↑ http://www.spektrum.de/lexikon/geographie/aequatoriale-westwindzone/428
  3. ↑ Monika Losert: The vegetation of the tropical semi-evergreen rainforests and monsoon forests. Grin Verlag, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3640378791 , p. 9.