Microclimates Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

This Microclimates Essay example is published for educational and informational purposes only. If you need a custom essay or research paper on this topic, please use our writing services. EssayEmpire.com offers reliable custom essay writing services that can help you to receive high grades and impress your professors with the quality of each essay or research paper you hand in.

Microclimates occur in localities where the atmosphere is different from the general climate of the surrounding area. They affect the fauna and flora of the small area enough to create a unique little ecology. Usually they cover a small forest, garden, or town.

Microclimates can be caused by nature or by human activities. They exist in many places. Some are near bodies of water that can cool the local atmosphere. Or some may be in sheltered glens or mountain coves where the atmosphere allows plants to grow that would not survive if exposed to the general atmosphere.

In some localities volcanic activity creates warm conditions that allow fauna or flora to grow where they would not otherwise survive. There are places such as remote, isolated valleys among high desert mountains where fauna and flora thrive sheltered from sun and drought. The Ahaggar Mountains (Hoggar) in the Algerian Sahara have verdant microclimates even though most of the Ahaggar Mountains are waterless regions. Occasional snows supply water to deep ravines in which vegetation grows.

Human activities can create microclimates. When dams are built, land is farmed, forests are logged, or afforestation is implemented, the local climate is sometimes significantly affected. Cities also affect the hydrology of an area because the absence of vegetation and loss of ground area for absorbing run off leads to localized flooding. Also, skyscrapers can create wind changes and a tunnel effect as winds are forced to flow between tall buildings in cities.

Humans also utilize microclimates. Planting gardens on urban rooftops can reduce ambient heat, and gardeners also often position certain plants were the sunshine will favor them. In the American South, fig trees are planted by the sheltered southern corners houses where they will be better sheltered from in winter. Farmers use local microclimatic features to grown crops in small areas when they cannot flourish in the surrounding climate. For example, xeriscaping uses knowledge of drought and desert conditions to promote the growth of decorative gardens. Using the sun-favored southern slopes in the Northern Hemisphere and the sun-favored northern slopes in the Southern Hemisphere plants or homes can take advantage of a local microclimate.

Slopes can also protect frost sensitive plants when they are placed nearer to the top of the slope-colder air sinks toward the bottom of slopes. Cherry trees are planted on the sides of slopes to keep them from standing in water. Gardens that are surrounded by walls are afforded protection from winds that can destroy fruit blossoms or tender leaves; fruit trees grown next to walls can use the heat absorbed by the wall as a radiator to promote ripening.

Some museums create artificial microclimates, such as hot jungles, rain forests, and cold climate rooms that permit storage or exhibition of plants and animals that would not normally thrive in the local atmosphere. Greenhouses, hothouses, or sheltered houses are artificial environments as well as artificial microclimates. By using trapped solar heat plants can be germinated earlier or grown to maturity sooner.

One of the most well-known microclimates is the summertime “urban heat island.” Microclimates occur in urban areas because asphalt and concrete streets combine with tall buildings of brick, stone, concrete, or other materials to absorb heat from the sun’s rays.

The absorbed energy is radiated as heat that adds to the air in the ambient atmosphere. The effect is to create a heat dome that makes the city locality hotter. Another example often seen is a natural park adjacent to a shopping mall that covers the same area as the natural park. The natural park will be cooler than the adjacent area. Each of these would be separate microclimates: The vegetation in the natural park will absorb the sun’s rays in its leaves; the grooves of the mall buildings and parking lot reflect the heat of the sun’s rays back into the ambient atmosphere. If solar energy striking urban areas were collected in a systematic fashion it could be harnessed as energy.

Bibliography:

Dario Camuffo, Microclimate for Cultural Heritage (Elsevier Science & Technology Books, 1994);
Hamlyn Jones, Plants and Microclimate: A Quantitative Approach to Plant Physiology (Cambridge University Press, 1992);
Norman Rosenberg, Blaine L. Blad, and Shashi B. Verma, Microclimate: The Biological Environment (John Wiley & Sons, 1983);
David Leslie Spittlehouse, S. Adams, and R.D. Winkler, Forest, Edge and Opening: Microclimate at Sicamous Creek (BPR Publishers, 2004).