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The plant community in an area is the most sensitive indicator of climate.
Areas with moderate to high temperatures and abundant rainfall throughout
the year are heavily forested (unless humans have cleared the land for
agriculture!). Areas with somewhat less rainfall are mainly grasslands,
which are called prairies in North America. Humans have converted grasslands
into rich agricultural areas around the world. Even in areas with high
yearly rainfall, trees are scarce if there is not much rainfall during
the warm growing season. Regions with not much rainfall and scarce vegetation
are called deserts, or arid regions. Areas with somewhat greater rainfall
are called semiarid regions. The problem with semiarid regions is that
when humans use them for agriculture, the loss of natural vegetation can
cause the areas to become deserts.
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©
NASA Earth Observatory
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Changes in Vegetation across the United States
These images show the (a) dominant vegetation type and (b)
fractional areal coverage (%) of each grid cell by the dominant
vegetation for the 1700, 1910, and 1990 vegetation cases.
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