Question

Which biome would be most impacted by agriculture? Which biome(s) would have fire adapted species?

Answer 1

Human activities over the world have impacted many biomes adversely. One of the major activity human rely on for their livelihood is agriculture. Expanding agricultural land have impacted many biomes and they are as follows:

• Grassland biomes like Savana, Temperate grassland (Prairie)
• Forest biomes like tropical forest, Temperate Forest, Chaparral scrub forest.

Agricultural activities when converts forest and grassland into farmland, the wild species lose their pristine habitat and some species are completly wiped out.While, some species are starved other have to migrate and can lead to human-animal conflict. Biomes nutrients and food cycle is also altered.

Few biomes with fire adapted plant species use fire to their advantage, these species require fire to germinate, reproduce. In Savana grassland, the grass isable to grow back as their roots is intact underground. While many Forest biomes, espcialy conifer species have evovled to be fire adapted, the examples are as follows:

• Sand Pine- They automatically reseed after fire
• Southeastern Pine forest- this has mixture of Loblolly, yellow, slash and longleaf pine forest. They resist fire as seedling and as mature trees
• Londgepole pine- adapted to fire as serotinous cones
• Ponderosa pine- these have thick bark and limbs long enough far from ground to resist surface fires.
• Chapparal- these are found on the west coasts if the USA, Chile, Australai, South Africa and Mediterranean. Plant have thick leaves and others burn quickly but regrow from the roots.
• Sequoia- Also known as Sierra redwood grows to hundred of feet tall. Without fires sequoias are slowly replaced by competing spruce and fir.