Climate and Soil Characteristics Of Sundaland
- Aleecia Dodd
- Oct 14, 2019
- 2 min read
Sundaland is a Biodiversity hotspot that includes a small part of Thailand, almost all of Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, The Nicobar Islands and the Western half of the Indonesian island chains, containing around 17,000 islands which include the large Borneo and Sumatra islands. The hotspot is considered one of the most Biologically rich areas on earth with over 25,000 species of plants, 60% which are endemic or specific to the island they are found on. Sundaland accounts for 1% of the earths surface area but it is home to 10% of the flowering plant species, 12% of the worlds mammals, 17% of the worlds birds and over 25% of the worlds fish species.
This level of diversity is stemmed from the highly diverse landscapes of mountains ranges, swamps, lakes and shallow coastal beaches and the climate, which is hot as this hotspot falls on and very near the equator and is considered ever-wet with above 2,000mm of rain per year and no recurring dry season. 110,000 to 12,000 years ago the shallow sea levels dropped allowing several of the hot spot specific animal species to travel between the islands, but not to the larger continents.
The various environments within Sundaland include lowland rainforests, mangrove forests, swamp forests, coral reefs, montane forests, subalpine forests which give life to the various species. The overall environment is a tropical rainforest and the soil is mostly classified as well drained acidic, (pH less than 4,) sandy, with a low clay content, sourced from siliceous rock (or silica.) These are also know as heath forests or the more water logged areas, or swamps are kerapah forests. This type of soil quickly turns to bleached white sand when the top layer of vegetation is cleared, which removes the soils productivity, making this type of environment very fragile. There are many canopies of trees and various plants that eventually contribute to the dense vegetation layer protecting the soil, as in all tropical rainforest biomes.
The tropical rainforest here, as with most others on earth are being destroyed for logging and commercial use of the land! This means the loss of habitat and various plant species.
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