Page:Niger Delta Ecosystems- the ERA Handbook, 1998.djvu/40

What is the Environment? For the same reason as plants, animal diversity is high in the Niger Delta.

3.2.7 THE DYNAMIC ECOLOGICAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SOILS, VEGETATION AND ANIMALS

Soils and climate determine vegetation, but clearly, also, vegetation influences the soil: change the vegetation from forest to plantation and you will thereby change the nature of the soil. The climate, hydrology and vegetation are able to determine what sort of aquatic and terrestrial animal communities live in an area.

Animals also influence vegetation by their eating habits. They influence the soil by the deposition of their waste products on to it, by burrowing into it and, at death, by becoming part of it.

Thus the relationship between soils, vegetation and animals is a complex of cycles. This relationship is particularly obvious in the mangrove forests where we can see soils and communities of plants and animals evolving together on new land.

Vegetation also affects climate. For example rain rolls into the interior of Borneo, the world's third largest island, because it is taken up by the forest vegetation which then releases the water again by evapo-transpiration. This same water falls again further and further inland. Take away the forest and the interior will be much drier.

3.2.8 PEOPLE

The impact of people and of their societies upon the landscape is so pervasive that often, in urban and agricultural landscapes, we forget about the other components altogether. Conversely, when we are in the "bush" (which may seem to city eyes seem wild and natural), we fail to see that the landscape is often as influenced by man as any city or plantation. This very is true of the Niger Delta, where mankind's exploitation of the landscape has influenced most areas. The mangrove forests are perhaps the least cultured part of the landscape, but even they have been influenced by mankind for thousands of years.

3.3 THE HUMAN LANDSCAPE: ECONOMIC ACTIVITY AND SOCIETY

Most landscapes, even those that seem to be entirely natural, are a manifestation of human ecosystems which have arisen out of mankind's dynamic relationship with natural ecosystems. This relationship can also be understood as economic activity because: 38