Distribution and Climate
Dependent on local climate, which is affected by the distance to the sea, the exposition and the latitude (from 23°N to 25°S), the altitude varies from 500 m to 4000 m above sea level. Typically, there is a relatively small band of altitude in which the atmospheric environment is suitable for cloud forest development. This is characterized by persistent nuclear fog or radiation zones at the vegetation level, resulting in the reduction of direct sunlight and thus of evapotranspiration. Within cloud forests, much of the precipitation is in the form of fog drip, where fog condenses on tree leaves and then drips onto the ground below.
Annual rainfall can range from 500 to 10,000 mm/year and mean temperature between 8 to 20 °C.
While cloud forest today is the most widely used term, in some regions these ecosystems or special types of cloud forests are called mossy forest, elfin forest, montane thicket, dwarf cloud forest, nuboselva, bosque montano nebuloso, selva de neblina, bosque nuboso, bosque de ceja, selva sublada, nebelwald, wolkenwald, forêt néphéliphile, forêt de nuage, unmu-rin, bosque anao, foresta nebular, mata nebular, matinha nebular, floresta fe neblina, floresta nuvigena, mata de neblina, matinha de altitude, floresta nublada, and floresta pluvial montana e/ou alto montana.
The definition of cloud forest can be ambiguous, with many countries not using the term (preferring such terms as Afromontane forest and upper montane rain forest, montane laurel forest, or more localised terms such as the Bolivian yungas, and the laurisilva of the Atlantic Islands), and occasionally subtropical and even temperate forests in which similar meteorological conditions occur are considered to be cloud forests.
Only 1% of the global woodland is covered by cloud forests.
Important areas of cloud forest are in Central- and South America, East- and Central Africa, Indonesia, Malaysia, at the Philippines, Papua-New Guinea and in the Caribbean. (see following list and )
Read more about this topic: Cloud Forest
Famous quotes containing the words distribution and/or climate:
“There is the illusion of time, which is very deep; who has disposed of it? Mor come to the conviction that what seems the succession of thought is only the distribution of wholes into causal series.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Russian forests crash down under the axe, billions of trees are dying, the habitations of animals and birds are layed waste, rivers grow shallow and dry up, marvelous landscapes are disappearing forever.... Man is endowed with creativity in order to multiply that which has been given him; he has not created, but destroyed. There are fewer and fewer forests, rivers are drying up, wildlife has become extinct, the climate is ruined, and the earth is becoming ever poorer and uglier.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)