Explain the relationship between rainfall and natural vegetation in Ghana giving examples
Answers
One of the most important ingredients for plant growth is water. In many ecosystems, particularly grasslands and cropland, seasonal plant growth occurs in perfect synch with the rainy season. In times of drought, vegetation in these ecosystems grows poorly, if at all. Abundant rain leads to a burst of green.
Answer:
Share Download full-text PDF
Rainfall and temperature affect tree species distribution in Ghana
Article (PDF Available) in Journal of Tropical Ecology 30(05):435-446 · September 2014 with 3,823 Reads
DOI: 10.1017/S026646741400025X
Cite this publication
Lucy Amissah
10.86CSIR-Forestry Research Institute of Ghana
G.M.J. Mohren
39.25Wageningen University & Research
+ 1
Frans Bongers
45.26Wageningen University & Research
William D. Hawthorne
Show more authors
Abstract
We evaluated the relative importance of annual rainfall, temperature and their seasonality to tree species distribution in Ghana. We used species presence/absence data from 2505 1-ha plots systematically distributed over Ghana's forests. Logistic regression was used to determine species responses to four climatic variables generated from the Worldclim database. The distribution of 95% of 20 species was significantly associated with annual rainfall, 60% with rainfall seasonality, 45% with isothermality and 40% with temperature seasonality. Annual rainfall explained on average most of the variation (17%, range = 0.5-52%) in species distribution, followed by rainfall seasonality 5% (range = 0.5-27%), isothermality 4% (range = 0.8-24%) and temperature seasonality 1% (range = 0.4-4.5%). Our results suggest that, out of the climatic variables investigated, rainfall is the main factor determining tree species distribution in Ghana; temperature also influences the distribution of a number of species, although it explains much less of the variation. The reduction in annual rainfall that prevailing climate-change scenarios predict for the region will result in a shift in the distribution of most species, whereas the predicted increase in temperature variation is likely to have little effect.
Explanation:
Please mark as brainlist and follow me please
Hope this helps you #