Natural areas of Australia - many deserts and few forests

The presence of natural zones on the mainland and their location directly depend on climatic zones. Proceeding from the fact that Australia is considered the most arid continent, it becomes clear that there can not be a great variety here. But the natural areas of Australia have an extraordinary uniqueness of the plant and animal world.

Many deserts and few forests

On the smallest continent zoning is well traced. This is due to the predominantly flat character of the relief. The natural zones of Australia gradually change one another in the meridional direction, following the change in temperature and precipitation.

The southern tropic crosses the continent almost in the middle, and most of its territory is in the hot tropical climatic zone, which makes the climate arid. By the number of precipitation annual precipitation Australia is among the last of all continents. Most of its territory within a year receives only 250 mm of precipitation. In many parts of the continent, rain falls for several years.

Australia, the natural zones of which divide the continent into three parts, in the east and west has several zones stretched along the coast, where the amount of precipitation is much larger. The mainland is in the first place by the relative area of desert areas and last in the area of forests. In addition, only 2% of Australia's forests are of industrial importance.

Features of natural areas

Savannah and woodlands are located in the subequatorial climatic zone. The vegetation is dominated by herbs, among which grow acacia, eucalyptus, and bottle trees.

In the east of the mainland, in conditions of sufficient moisture, there are such natural areas of Australia as wetlands rainforests. Among palm trees, ficus and tree ferns live marsupial anteaters, wombats, kangaroos.

The natural areas of Australia are different from similar territories on other continents. For example, semi-deserts and tropical deserts occupy huge areas on the mainland - almost 44% of its territory. In the Australian deserts, you can find unusual thickets of dry thorny bushes, called scrabs. Sites of semi-deserts, overgrown with hard-grain plants and shrubs, are used as pastures for sheep. There are also large sand deserts, which differ from the deserts of other continents in that they do not have oases.

In the south-east and south-west of the continent are subtropical forests, in which grow eucalyptus and evergreen beech.

Originality of the organic world

The flora of Australia, due to prolonged isolation from other continents, has a large number of endemic plants. Almost 75% of them can be seen only here and nowhere else. More than 600 species of eucalyptus, 490 species of acacia and 25 species of Kazaurin occur on the mainland.

The animal world is even more peculiar. Among animals, endemics make up almost 90%. Only in Australia can you find mammals that on other continents disappeared long ago, for example, echidna and platypus - ancient primitive animals.