| In general, rainfall is heaviest around the equator. The farther away from the equator, the longer the dry season. Since water is so important for maintaining the forest's canopy of green leaves, areas with longer dry seasons tend to have deciduous* forests. In these places, trees lose their leaves during all or part of the dry season. In temperate forests, trees lose their leaves as the cold weather begins, but even tropical forests can be deciduous, sometimes only losing their leaves for a few weeks while water is in shortest supply, and regrowing them as the rainy season begins. |
|
Water and wet soil carry dissolved nutrients
gradually downslope. If a forest is fragmented, however, by a road or structure, this nutrient dispersal is intercepted. Instead of being
evenly distributed throughout the soil, water pools up behind the obstruction or runs along it, and few nutrients from higher up reach the
trees downslope from the interruption. Water eventually finds its way to valley bottoms, where it collects in
riparian* areas.
Water drops collected on a leaf. Photo by Maya Walters. |
water -- page 4 of 5
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sub-topic
[riparian zones]
related topics
[seasons] [temperate forests] [tropical forests] [soil]
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