1.3 MAJOR LANDFORMS OF AFRICA Flashcards
Landforms are the results of ____________ and ______________.
volcanic and tectonic processes
___________________ provide a physical context for describing the landscape, topography, and ecological units within the environment.
Landforms
Landforms are ecologically important elements because _______________ develop within landform regions, and material and energy flows occur within the landform system.
Ecosystems
Landforms have little influence on the climate of a region.
False, they affect, modify and influence climate
The effect can be recognized in both large areas as _______________ and small areas as ____________________.
macroclimate, microclimate
List the four effects of landforms on ecosystem patterns and processes.
1) Landform attributes (elevation, steepness of slope, and aspect) produce many different patterns which determine the ecological potential of an area.
2) They affect the flow of organisms, energy ,and material.
3) They affect the spatial pattern of non-geomorphic disturbance by fire and wind.
4) They may resist changes that geomorphic processes create; hence protecting biotic features and processes.
In Africa , there are _______ significant landform regions.
four
Each of these regions contains eight major physical regions:
- African Alpine System: Atlas Mountains
- African Massif: The Sahara, Sahel, Savanna and Tropical rainforest
- East African Highlands and rift system: The Rift Valley and African Great Lakes and The Ethiopian Highlands
- Southern Africa Platform: Mountains and Desert systems of South Africa.
Atlas Mountains: contains a range of mountains in North Africa that extends from ______________ to ________________.
Morocco to Tunisia
Atlas Mountain forms a series of mountain chains including: Hint 6
The Anti-Atlas, High Atlas, Middle Atlas, Rift Mountains, Tell Atlas, and Sahara Atlas.
The Atlas Mountains make up the Maghrib region including: 3
Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia.
Maghrib means ____________.
‘west’ in Arabic
The Atlas mountain range extends for more than __________ kilometers, from the _________________ in the southwest, to the __________________ in the northeast.
2,000
Moroccan port of Agadir
Tunisian capital of Tunis
The topography of the Atlas mountain forms a high divide between the _______________ in the north and the _____________ in the south.
Mediterranean Sea, Sahara Desert
With an area of ___________ square kilometers, it is the largest hot desert in the world.
9,200,000
The _ covers the entire region of North Africa, from the Atlantic coast in the west to the Red Sea in the east.
Sahara Desert
The Sahara borders the _____________ and the _________________ in the north.
Mediterranean Sea, Atlas Mountains
The Sahara Desert extends south into ___________ and a region known as the ____________.
Sudan, Sahel
The Sahara encompasses whole or large
parts of _________ countries in North Africa.
Ten
The countries the Sahara encompasses are:
Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Sudan, and Tunisia.
The landscape of the Sahara is covered with ___________.
sand
The Sahara Desert has enormous quantities of reddish sand dune that is weathered from ______________.
sandstone
Enormous quantities of reddish sand dune make up a great sand sea, called ___________.
Erg
A type of surface where a desert pavement of pebbles on top of vast flat-surfaced sheets of sand is called _________.
Reg
The ______________ is a vast semiarid region of North Africa, to the south of the Sahara that forms a transitional zone at the south of the desert and comprises the northern part of the region known as the ____________.
Sahel, Sudan
Sahel is an _________ word (sahil) meaning “_________”.
Arabic, shore
The Sahel refers to the
___________ kilometers stretch of savanna that is the shore or edge of the Sahara Desert.
5,000
The Sahel spreads west to east from ____________ and ____________ to ______________.
Mauritania, Senegal, Somalia
Countries in the Sahel include: 9
Burkina Faso, Chad, Eritrea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sudan
The _ are grasslands and savannahs, with scrub areas to the north, alternating areas of trees, mainly acacias in the south.
Sahel lands
_____________ is a land covered with grass and other low plants suitable for grazing animals.
Pasture
T/F
In the Sahel region, there are no grazing lands for the livestock (camel, pack ox, and grazing cattle and sheep).
False, the semiarid grassland of the Sahel has natural pasture, with low-growing grass and tall herbaceous perennials.
T/F
The landscape of the Sahel is from the savanna type.
False, it is similar
The ___________ is a transitional region between rainforest and the Sahel grassland.
Savanna
The Sahel region tends to merge into desert because of ______________ and ______________.
human activities, climate change
T/F
The African savanna region is a tropical grassland with few trees and shrubs.
True
T/F
The African savanna region is a tropical grassland with abundant trees and shrubs.
False
___________ is a woody plant smaller than a tree and has a very short stem with branches near the ground.
Shrub
The trees in the Savanna region are _______________ trees.
drought resistant
T/F
The tree and shrub species in the savanna never shed their leaves.
False, they usually shed their leaves during the dry season.
The shedding of the leaves is an __________________ process of the trees to the all year-round hot temperature of the Savanna.
adaptation
The shedding of the leaves is an adaptation process that _______________________.
reduces water loss from the plants.
Based on vegetation types, the Savanna region has ________ important parts
two
The Savanna region has two important parts – ____________ and __________________ Savanna.
Woodland, thorn tree tall grass
In Savana ______________, the trees are widely spaced because there is not enough soil moisture during the dry season to support a full tree cover
woodland
The open spacing of Savana woodland lets a dense lower layer where _______________ develop.
grasses
The Savana _______________ has an open, park-like appearance.
woodland
In the ________________ of Africa, the trees are of medium height.
tropical savanna woodland
_________________ are flattened or umbrella-shaped, and the trunks have thick, rough bark.
Tree crowns
Some species of trees are ________________ – adapted to the dry environment with small leaves and thorns
xerophytic forms
Others trees of the tropical savanna woodland are _________________ species that shed their leaves in the dry season.
broad-leaved deciduous
T/F
Fires occur frequently in the savanna woodland all-year round, but the tree species are mostly fire resistant.
False, it only happens during the dry season
___________________ occur both to the north and south of the Equator.
Tropical rainforests
The rainforests near the equator are known as _________________.
equatorial rainforests
_______________ are very diverse and contain large number of plant and animal species.
Equatorial rainforests
Flora is highly diverse in the equatorial rainforests where a square kilometer may contain as many as ______ different tree species as compared to ___ or ____ in the temperate zone.
100, 3 or 4
____________________ dominate the vegetation cover of equatorial rainforests.
Broadleaf evergreen trees
Six African countries makeup the ________________ of the Tropical Rainforest.
Congo Basin
The six African countries that make up the Congo Basin are:
Cameroon, Central African Republic, Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, and Equatorial Guinea
Other areas where the rainforest is found include;
3.
Ghana, Ivory Coast and Madagascar
The various trees of the tropical rain forests are closely spaced together and form a thick continuous canopy some ________ to ________ meters tall.
25 to 35
Sometimes the canopy of the tropical rainforest is interrupted by the presence of very tall trees (up to _____ meters) that have wide buttressed bases for support.
40
Most plants are ______________ with large, dark green, leathery leaves.
evergreen
Epiphytic and herbaceous plants as well as, vines (lianas) and ferns are very characteristic of the _.
tropical rainforest
T/F
The rainforest climate is wet all the year or it has a long dry season.
False, it has a short dry season
Annual rainfall of the tropical rainforest, which exceeds _ to _ millimeters, is evenly distributed throughout the year.
2000 to 2250
T/F
In tropical rainforests, temperature and humidity are relatively low throughout the year.
False, they are high
T/F
Decomposition is rapid in the tropical rainforests because of high temperature and low moisture.
False, they’re both high
Meanwhile, due to the frequent and heavy rainfall in the area, tropical soils are subject to extreme _ and _.
chemical weathering and leaching
These environmental
conditions also make tropical soils _ and _.
acidic, nutrient poor.
The Rift Valley of East Africa was formed by _.
normal faulting
_ was formed as the land stretched by forces moving in _ direction creating rupture and splitting apart the land in between.
The Rift Valley of East Africa, opposite
Normal faulting creates an area called -.
graben
_ is an elongated block of the earth’s crust lying between two faults and displaced downward relative to the blocks on either side in a rift valley.
Graben
_ begins from the Red Sea and extends through the Ethiopian landmass to the Lake Victorian region where it subdivides into an east and west segment and continues southward through Lake Malawi to Mozambique.
The Rift Valley of East Africa
The total length of The Rift Valley of East Africa is estimated to be _ km.
5,600
The average width of the Rift Valley System ranges between _ km and _ km.
32 and 80
_ are series of lakes in the East African Rift valley that runs through eastern Africa from Ethiopia in the north to Malawi in the south, and includes the African Great Lakes in the south.
The Rift Valley lakes
The Rift Valley lakes are series of lakes in the East African Rift valley that run through eastern Africa from _ in the north to _ in the south, and includes the African Great Lakes in the south.
Ethiopia, Malawi
Many of the Rift Valley lakes are _ lake with
great biodiversity in them, while others are _ or _lakes.
freshwater, alkaline or salty
The _ lakes are the northernmost of the African Rift Valley lakes.
Ethiopian Rift Valley
In central Ethiopia, the _ , also known as the _ , splits the Ethiopian highlands into northwestern and southeastern halves, and the Ethiopian Rift Valley lakes occupy the floor of the rift valley between the two highlands.
Main Ethiopian Rift, Great Rift Valley
Lake Victoria lies at an elevation of _ meters above sea level
1,134
Lake Victoria has an area of
_ square kilometers
68,800
_ is the largest lake in Africa.
Lake Victoria
T/F
Lake Victoria is an example of a Rift Valley lake
False, It is not in the rift valley, but instead occupies a depression between the eastern and western rifts formed by the uplift of the rifts to either side.
_ has some of the most spectacular scenery in Africa.
Ethiopia
Ethiopia is set on a _ plateau.
high
Ethiopia has a massive central highland complex of mountains divided by the deep _.
Great Rift Valley
T/F
Ethiopia has a series of highlands along the periphery (edges) of
the higher elevations.
False, it has lowlands
The wide diversity of terrain in Ethiopia produces regional variations in: 4
climate, natural vegetation, soil composition, and settlement patterns.
Ethiopia’s northwestern highlands extend into _, reaching elevations of more than _ meters above sea level.
Eritrea, 2,000
_ shares the northeast section of the Ethiopian high plateau, which in appearance looks more like a set of rugged uneven mountains.
Eritrea
The plateau, also known as the _, rise on the western scarp of the Great Rift Valley and projects northward from Addis Ababa in Ethiopia to the Red Sea coastline in Eritrea and descends to the Red Sea coast in a series of hills.
Northwestern Highlands
