GEOG 203 Lecture 4: Lecture-4
Document Summary
Crowns of trees form a dense canopy: tree crowns of trf (tropical rain forest) can be grouped into layers: Highest layer is the emergent layer, with >40m high tree canopies, typically with buttressed roots for extra support. These trees also support life form many animal species, as well as for epiphytes and lianas. The complex structure of the rain forest allows not just pacjing of plants, but also packing of various life strategies, or niches. This great variety of plant species in turn supports a highly diverse animal species: gap succession-trf. Gap succession is a process by which also the trf is maintained (occurs in trf as well) Succession in trf is not predictable, such is the case in mid-latitude forest,s, though the diversity of the trf makes the disturbances untrackable. This intern makes it impossible to track one climax species , but rather we have many ddominant species which are found readily.
