Forests are the green lungs of the planet. The article will talk about which types of forests surround us.
What is a forest?
From the point of view of botany, this is a separate ecosystem, in which the main unit is trees.
In total on the planet, the area of such ecosystems is 38 million km2, which is one third of the land. Only 7% of all green areas are planted by human hands, the rest (264 million hectares) are natural types of forests.
Forests come in 3 types, depending on which climatic zone they grow in and what types of trees prevail in them. Next, consider the types of forests.
Deciduous forest
These are forests that consist of deciduous trees (birch, linden, oak, acacia, aspen, elm, maple, beech, elm, alder and others) and shrub understory (hazel, viburnum, sea buckthorn, bird cherry).
There are several of their subspecies, depending on which trees prevail in the area. For example, broad-leaved forests are characterized by deciduous trees with wide leaves. These are oak, beech, linden, hornbeam, maple, ash, elm.
Birch forests are very beautiful - one of the most prolific, as well as purebred plantings. They cover an area of about 88.7 ha in Russia. Birch trees are unpretentious plants; they grow even on poor soils. Under suitable climatic conditions, they grow rapidly, forming first birch groves, and soon forests. The life span of a tree is 100-150 years.
Aspen forests are considered the most demanding of all. Form vast areas on fertile lands under favorable conditions. The total area in Russia that they occupy is approaching 16 million hectares. A feature of aspens is that they are able to intensively purify the air. It is believed that in two cubic meters of aspen, there are about 500 species of different healing bacteria. Essential oil of trembling poplar (the second name of aspen) has healing properties. It is very useful for people with various diseases of the respiratory tract.
Oak forests are forests in which oak predominates. They make noise mainly in Eurasia. Beech forests (buchins) are widespread in Ukraine and Crimea. Alder forests (alder forests) are also valuable.
It must be understood that there are no forests in which only one species of trees grows, that is, in nature you cannot meet pure oak groves or aspen trees, there are always impurities.
In mixed forests, deciduous trees are mostly, but spruces and pines can also grow between them.
Deciduous, including broad-leaved forests are distributed throughout the northern hemisphere; their small stands are found in New Zealand and South America. In Russia, vast deciduous green areas grow everywhere from the steppe zone up to the taiga.
The national economic activity of man is rapidly reducing the volume of forest cover.
Coniferous forests
There are such types of coniferous forests: spruce (spruce), pine, larch (foliage), cedar (cedar forests), fir (fir) and mixed. Purebred plantations, as a rule, are the work of man, in natural conditions mixed forests are mainly formed.
Evergreen coniferous forests are the longest areas of continuous tree cover on the planet. They grow mainly in North America and northern Eurasia up to the 42nd parallel in the south on the Japanese island of Honshu. They are found in the mountains of Australia and South America. Most of them belong to the taiga (Karelian taiga, West Siberian, Yenisei, Tunguska, Yakutia, Far East and others).
There are forests:
- dark coniferous (dominated by spruce, fir, cedar);
- light coniferous (pine, larch prevail).
Features of conifers: it is always gloomy here, as sunlight penetrates poorly through mighty crowns, it is also damp here, and the soil is completely covered with moss. These types of forests have not three tiers, like deciduous, but two, since shrubs take root in these places poorly. Under spruce paws, pine and fir branches, dense thickets of blueberries, sour acid, fern, lingonberry, cuckoo flax grow.
Tropics
Rainforests, or tropics, are another type of green space. Surround the globe with a wide belt around the equator. In addition to the equatorial zone, the tropical, subtropical and subequatorial zones are affected. There are evergreen and winter green. The latter discard foliage during seasonal drought.
Evergreen rainforests are divided into:
- Mangroves. They grow in those coastal areas that flood during the tides.
- Mountain tropics.
- Swampy tropical massifs. They occupy a much smaller area than all other types of forests.
Seasonal forests are divided into:
- Monsoon. They grow in the area of monsoon action - South and Southeast Asia, West Indies, Central America, West Africa.
- Savannah. They grow where the dry season is clearly expressed.
- Thorny xerophilous forests. There are not many of them, they are grouped in the area where the dry season lasts 6 months or more.
Now you know what types of forests grow on Earth.
