tropical zone

The Tropical Zone, which arcs east and west across the northern margin of the continent and extends halfway down the eastern seaboard, has a mainly dry monsoonal climate, with some wet regions. The Temperate Zone, with a cool-to-warm (temperate-to-subtropical) climate and precipitation mostly in winter, is…

…of the Caribbean generally is tropical, but there are great local variations, depending on mountain elevation, water currents, and the trade winds. Rainfall varies from about 10 inches (25 cm) per year on the island of Bonaire off the coast of Venezuela to some 350 inches (900 cm) annually in…

Tropical regions are dominated by dense vegetative cover and deep weathering profiles. In continuously humid tropical zones, fluvial activity is facilitated by intense rainfall but inhibited by the protective effect of rainforests. The lateritic soils of these regions, however, do not promote deep…

There is no sharp line of demarcation between the tropics and the subtropics. Just as many tropical plants can be cultivated in the subtropics, so also many subtropical and even temperate plants can be grown satisfactorily in the tropics. Elevation is a determining…

In tropical waters, variation in sunlight and temperature is slight, nutrients are present in low concentrations, and planktonic assemblages do not undergo large fluctuations in abundance. There are, however, rapid cycles of reproduction and high rates of grazing and predation that result in a rapid turnover…

…spots tend to occur in tropical environments where species richness and biodiversity are much higher than in ecosystems closer to the poles.

In the tropics, however, little opportunity for similar overland movement of cold-adapted biota was possible because vast forestland in the tropical lowlands formed a barrier to migration. The organisms therefore have been isolated more completely from those of other cold environments. Despite this situation, colonization of tropical…

In the tropics, by contrast, species-diverse forests that can be described as stunted evergreen rainforests typically grow as far as the uppermost limits of tree growth. This is the case in New Guinea, Southeast Asia, and East Africa; however, in parts of the tropical Andes, single species…

Their distribution encompasses the tropical and southern temperate regions of the world, including Madagascar, many Pacific Islands, and the West Indies. In Asia they occur throughout almost all of India but extend northward only to the Himalayas and southern China. They are absent from Europe. In North America one…

…usually large estate in a tropical or subtropical region that is cultivated by unskilled or semiskilled labour under central direction. This meaning of the term arose during the period of European colonization in the tropics and subtropics of the New World, essentially, wherever huge tracts of crops cultivated by slave…

Water conditions favourable to the growth of reefs exist in tropical or near-tropical surface waters. Regional differences may result from the presence or absence of upwelling currents of colder waters or from the varying relation of precipitation to evaporation.