Please respond to katy with 270 words . Please provide an assessment of katys response, and also include the references and citations listed in katy’s response.
Question #1-Describe the factors that represent habitat and why each is important in determining the characteristics of individual plant communities.
Habitat is defined in the dictionary as a place or environment where a plant or animal naturally or normally lives or grows. Because of California’s size and unique location, California is home to one of the largest varieties of habitats in one state. We have deserts, grasslands, wetlands, coastline, scrublands and forests. The coastal habitat includes the tidal zones, coastal strand and coastal salt marshes. Knowledge of habitats is critical in the study of the distribution of plants and animals in California. Habitats hold a combination of physical factors such as climate, slope, soil, and drainage. Habitats are very important to the plants and animals of california, and represent the environmental conditions in which organisms live. A habitat must possess all the environmental settings a plant or animal needs to survive. A good habitat must include the right amount of sun, air conditions, rich soils, and water. Drier areas are home to more drought resistant plants such as the california sagebrush or the manzanita tree. Whereas the coastal regions are home to california poppies and redwood trees. California’s wide variety of beautiful plant species are just one of the reasons I love living in this great state.
Rediscovering the Golden State
William A Selby
Chapter 5
National Geographic Research Library
https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/habitat/ (Links to an external site.)
California Habitats, Mammals, Birds, Amphibians, Reptiles
Question #2-Explain how southern California plant communities have adapted to summer drought. Give specific examples.
Southern California’s plant communities have evolved over time. Many factors contribute to this exchange such as dispersal events, climate, slope, soils, fires, human interaction, and many others. The climate type in much of California is described as Mediterranean climate, with winter rains and dry, hot summers. The vegetation in these climates is adapted to seasonal drought because it typically experiences intensely low precipitation during the hottest times of the year, which is generally between July and late September, with regular highs around 99 degrees fahrenheit, and rarely dropping below 65 degrees fahrenheit. California’s climate has been this way for more than 11,00 years, since the last ice age. One example of a drought tolerant community in Southern California is Chaparral. Chaparral covers nearly 10% of the state. There, you will find short, dense, and scrubby vegetation. They look like this because short, dense and scrubby vegetation thrive very well in intensely dry habitats. This is called a drought-resistant strategy for survival. The plant species in this community are adapted to living in dry climates where water conservation is key. The plants in Chaparral display beautiful sclerophyll leaves, which work a bit backwards. As opposed to losing their leaves in the winter like most plants, they lose their leaves in the summer. They call these drought deciduous plants. This reduces the energy and water demand of the plant in the drier summer droughts. This is just one example of the drier plant communities.
Rediscovering the Golden State
William A Selby
Chapter 5
The Impact of Drought on Native Southern California Vegetation: Remote Sensing Analysis Using MODIS-Derived Time Series
RESEARCH ARTICLE
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/2018JG004485 (Links to an external site.)
Chaparral Biome: The Perfect Climate
Rob Nelson
https://untamedscience.com/biology/biomes/chaparral-biome/ (Links to an external site.)
Question #3-Why is fire beneficial to plant communities and which species in particular are reliant upon it for their survival.
Californians have been known to build within numerous plant communities where fires are inevitable. Many popular locations such as Malibu, Laguna, Beverly Hills, Santa Barbara, Oakland, Berkeley, and even our beautiful, and might I add very important to myself personally, wine country. Fire season is the time of the year when wildfires are most likely to happen. With the most recent climate changes as a developing factor, some experts suggest that California’s fire season is now year round. Californians have built their homes within fire country, suppressed fires and paid the price for centuries. Although even the early California Indians started their fair share of wildfires, there is evidence of frequent smaller California fires even before human interaction was a factor. Sadly, because of past fire suppression, wildfires today burn so rapidly and with so much heat that they kill native plants and animals that would have most likely survived and thrived to quickly repopulate an area. We have only recently learned that by lighting controlled fires, or allowing some wildfires to burn, we can restore plant communities to their natural states and decrease the threat of more destructive and devastating fires. On days with higher humidity and low winds, fire crews may start controlled burns that are designed to clear out dead fuel and brush, and return a plant community to its natural state, therefore ensuring that the next fire will not burn so hot. Many species within these plant communities survive by “crown sprouting”. This is a process where the plant regrows from root crowns. Other plants shed seeds that will only germinate after the soil has been scorched and re moisturized. Some local herbs are known as “pyrophyte endemics” because they will only germinate and grow after a fire has deposited the necessary minerals in the soil. Some examples of fire thriving plants species are the coastal redwoods and our own giant sequoias.
Rediscovering the Golden State
William A Selby
Chapter 5
Wikipedia “Pyrophyte”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrophyte (Links to an external site.)
When is fire season in California
https://www.frontlinewildfire.com/when-california-fire-season/ (Links to an external site.)
Question #5-Choose an individual plant community and describe its habitat and common plants and animals within it.
I have chosen to write about the California Grasslands for this question. Originally about 13% of california was covered by these beautiful wavy fields. Mostly in the inland valleys and tucked coastal hills and mountains. Some of these beautiful valleys include Sacramento, San Joaquin, and Salinas, and other inland valleys surrounding the Bay Area as well as the inland coastal plains of Southern California. Most of California’s grasslands are accustomed to long, hot and dry summers, and lower winter precipitation, with winter rains draining quickly through the thick porous soil, often leaving dry plant roots. Most trees and even shrubs cannot survive in this environment due to lack of water or nutrients or both. Plants that are not properly adapted wither by early summer. In the classic book “An Island Called California” the writer, Elna Baker compares california’s grasslands to those of the U.S. Great Plains Grasslands, calling the plant community “California’s Kansas”. The pronghorn antelope and the tule elk play the role of the large grazers in the California valleys. There is an abundance of small herbivores, especially insects. Small mammals and birds such as the meadow mice, pocket mice, kangaroo rats, gophers, goldfinches and sparrows, and insects such as grasshoppers, ants and crickets call the grasslands home, and feast on seeds and native plantlife. With fewer large predators, the gopher community has grown to more than 30 per acre in some fields. Grasshopper mice, deer mice, and lizards feast on insects as do some small carnivorous birds. It is also home to a wide variety of snakes, coyotes, foxes and predatory birds. This wide variety of unique plants and animals thrive in California’s grasslands.
Rediscovering the Golden State
William A Selby
Chapter 5 pages 153-155
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