The Tropics

Geography of Extreme Environments Deserts Polar Regions The Tropics The Tropics Charles F. Gritzner South Dakota State University FRONTIS The Polar Regions, Wet Tropics, and Deserts are highlighted on this map of the world’s extreme climates. The Tropics Copyright © 2007 by Infobase Publishing All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information contact: Chelsea House An imprint of Infobase Publishing 132 West 31st Street New York, NY 10001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gritzner, Charles F. The tropics / Charles F. Gritzner. p. cm. — (Geography of extreme environments) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7910-9233-X (hardcover) 1. Tropics—Juvenile literature. I. Title. G907.G75 2006 910.913—dc22 Chelsea House books are available at special discounts when purchased in bulk quantities for businesses, associations, institutions, or sales promotions. Please call our Special Sales Department in New York at (212) 967-8800 or (800) 322-8755. You can find Chelsea House on the World Wide Web at http://www.chelseahouse.com Series design by Keith Trego Cover design by Ben Peterson Printed in the United States of America Bang KT 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This book is printed on acid-free paper. All links and Web addresses were checked and verified to be correct at the time of publication. Because of the dynamic nature of the Web, some addresses and links may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. Contents 1 Introducing the Wet Tropical Realm 2 Weather and Climate of the Wet Tropics 16 3 Land and Water Features 30 4 Tropical Rain Forest Ecosystems 43 5 Native Peoples 59 6 European Influences 74 7 Contemporary Conditions and Regions 91 8 Tropical Lands in 7 the Twenty-first Century 110 Historical Geography at a Glance 113 Bibliography 116 Further Reading 117 Index 121 1 Introducing the Wet Tropical Realm T he Wet Tropics: Few of Earth’s environments can match the hot, steamy equatorial region for evoking strong emotions, presenting sharp contrasts, or being more shrouded in mystery and myth. This is a chief geographic characteristic of the world’s extreme environments: the Arctic, Desert, and Wet Tropical lands. We may be repelled by them, but at the same time, we are fascinated by their extreme and often exotic conditions. Certainly this is true of the Wet Tropics, an environment defined on the basis of its high temperature and abundant year-round rainfall. From the dawn of human history—believed by scientists to have begun in the equatorial tropics of East Africa—humans have been and continue to be tropical animals. As such, we are very poorly adapted biologically to the cold. Culture is humankind’s adaptive mechanism. Our knowledge, tools, and skills, rather than our bodies, made it possible to slip the bonds of nature’s grip and move into nontropical lands. It is ironic that what was once our biological   The Tropics homeland has more recently been described in such terms as White Man’s Grave and Green Hell. Early Greek scholars even believed that human life could not survive in what they called the “torrid zone.” To nineteenth-century Europeans, Africa was the “Dark Continent.” In South America, one early explorer, after traveling in the Orinoco River Basin, is believe