Afromontane forests

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African Montaner Forest in Nature's Valley in the province of Western Cape in South Africa

Afromontane forests are evergreen moist mountain forests that occur in warm, humid mountain climates in montane locations of tropical and subtropical mountains in sub-Saharan Africa and the Arabian Peninsula . The existence of that mountain forests are precipitation between 800/1000 and 2500 mm is required per year.

The main distribution area of ​​this island-like widespread type of vegetation extends from the Drakensberg in southern Africa over the mountain systems on both sides of the African rift valley to Ethiopia . Notable in West Africa are the Mount Cameroon and the highlands of Sierra Leone and the Bailundu Highlands in Angola . In South Africa the afromontane forests rise from the fynbos bushes of the plain. Further north there are various grasslands and savannas of the foot steps . In the direction of the equator , the afromontane forests rise higher and higher and in East Africa form the high-montane vegetation above the tropical cloud forests .

Although the afromontane forests - which are formed by tropical / subtropical conifers (such as broad-leaved stone slabs and common afro yellowwood ) and laurel plants - are relatively poor in species everywhere, they are important endemic centers with many old genera of the geological Gondwana continent. Today they are threatened by extensive land use, as the example of the Gishwati forest shows. In addition to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the "Mountain Agenda" gave high priority to mountain forests for the first time at the 1992 Rio Conference, and the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Center (UNEP-WCMC) is now focusing on protection tropical cloud forests.

An example of the structure and appearance of such forests is the Knysna Forest in South Africa. With a height of 40 m, stone slices form the upper tree layer. They can live up to 1,500 years and reach a trunk circumference of up to 6.5 m.

The botanist Frank White recognized the common features of these forests, which he chose as characteristic vegetation to delimit the afromontane regions .

Web links

Commons : Afromontane forest  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
  • Afromontage Forest - Afromontage Forest. (PDF; 575 kB) Flyer for the exhibition of the University Botanical Garden, Vienna 2006.
  • E. Fischer: Flora and vegetation of the Afromontane region in Central and East Africa. In: G. Rheinwald (Ed.): Isolated Vertebrate Communities in the Tropics. Proc. 4th Int. Symp. Bonn. 2000 (Bonn, Zool. Monogr., Vol. 46) pp. 121-129

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Conradin Burga, Frank Klötzli and Georg Grabherr (eds.): Mountains of the earth - landscape, climate, flora. Ulmer, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-8001-4165-5 . P. 375.
  2. ↑ Ulrike Aspöck and Horst Aspöck: Revision des Genus Podallea NAVAS, 1936 (Neuroptera: Berothidae: Berothinae) , in Mitteilungen der Münchner Entomologische Gesellschaft, Volume 86, Pfeil, Munich 1996, ISSN 0340-4943, p. 133.
  3. ↑ detailed genre list of the Knysna Forest (PDF; 166 kB) University of Heidelberg