Make a 5 page report on the Europe flora and fauna.( i.e. the information about the birds , animals and flowers of the continent).
Answers
Explanation:
Plant life
Major vegetation zones
The terms “natural,” “original,” and “primitive,” as epithets applied to the vegetation of Europe, have no precise meaning unless they are related to a specific time in geologic history. It is nevertheless possible to envisage continental vegetation zones as they formed and acquired some stability during postglacial times, although such zones are only rarely recalled by present-day remnants.Tundra vegetation, made up of lichens and mosses, occupies a relatively narrow zone in Iceland and the extreme northern portions of Russia and Scandinavia, although that zone is continued southward in the mountains of Norway. Vegetation of a similar kind occurs at elevations of 5,000 to 6,000 feet (1,500 to 1,800 metres) in the Alps and the northern Urals.Southward, the virtually treeless tundra merges into the boreal forest, or taiga. The more northerly zone is “open,” with stands of conifers and with willows and birch thickets rising above a lichen carpet. It is most extensive in northern Russia but continues, narrowing westward, across Sweden. South of that zone, and without an abrupt transition, the “closed” boreal forest occupies a large fraction—mainly north of the upper Volga River—of Russia and Scandinavia. Thin-leaved and cold-resistant conifers, together with birch, predominate.The northern vegetation may superficially suggest its primeval character, but the zone of mixed forest that once stretched across the continent from Great Britain and Ireland to central Russia has been changed extensively by humans. Surviving patches of woodland—associations of broad-leaved trees and some conifers, summarily described as Atlantic, central, and eastern—hint at the formerly extensive cover. Indeed, although as much as 80 percent of Europe’s land was once forested, in the early 21st century various forests (including both boreal and mixed types) covered only about 30 percent of the continent.In southern Europe, Mediterranean vegetation has a distinctive character, containing broad-leaved evergreen trees and shrubs as well as areas of scrub. Around the sea that vegetation is called maquis; it includes aromatic plants and small trees such as olives and figs. Scrub is scattered because of summer drought, particularly in areas where the soil is underlain by limestone or where there is little, if any, soil.The wooded-steppe and grass-steppe vegetation zones are confined primarily to southwestern Russia and Ukraine, although they also extend into the Danubian lowlands (see the Steppe). Semidesert vegetation characterizes the dry lowland around the northern and northwestern shores of the Caspian Sea.
Shaping of vegetation zones
Climatic changeThe primeval vegetation of Europe began to take shape as the climate ameliorated following the retreat of the Pleistocene ice sheets some 12,000 years ago. The microscopic study of pollen grains preserved in datable layers of peat and sediments has made it possible to trace the continental spread, in response to climatic improvement, of forest-forming trees. The double barrier of the Alps and the Mediterranean Sea had checked the southward retreat of trees at the onset of the ice ages, and there were relatively few indigenous species to return northward from unglaciated refuges. In the first postglacial climatic phase (the Boreal), spruce, fir, pine, birch, and hazel nevertheless established themselves as far north as central Sweden and Finland. During the succeeding climatic optimum (the Atlantic phase), which was probably wetter and certainly somewhat warmer, mixed forests of oak, elm, common lime (linden), and elder spread northward. Only in the late Atlantic period did the beech and hornbeam spread into western and central Europe from the southeast.
During postglacial times, therefore, when small numbers of humans were living within Europe, the continental surface was thickly clad with trees and undergrowth, except where tree growth was precluded by extreme cold, high elevation, bad drainage, or exposure to persistent gales. Even those areas where windblown loess was deeply deposited are now known to have had woods of beech, hawthorn, juniper, box, and ash, as did limestone plateaus. The Mediterranean peninsulas also had evergreen and mixed forests rooted in an ample soil.
Answer:
Plant life
Major vegetation zones
The terms “natural,” “original,” and “primitive,” as epithets applied to the vegetation of Europe, have no precise meaning unless they are related to a specific time in geologic history. It is nevertheless possible to envisage continental vegetation zones as they formed and acquired some stability during postglacial times, although such zones are only rarely recalled by present-day remnants.
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