Tuesday 29 September 2015

non seasonal tropics

This topic caught my attention recently, as though living in the tropics (southern Mexico) at this time I am very aware of the change of seasons, and autumn is visable as the corn dies back and some of the leaves turn brown.  It has reminded me of Tony Wright's description of crucial human development in aseasonal forest where the highly active tropical fruits that nourish our brains in inextraordinary ways are available all year round.  He talks about this in his book The Brain of Eden.

Actually looking at the map he referred me to I realised that recently I went in the region of aseasonal forest in the Lacandon Jungle.



Aseasonal forest is marked here in dark blue.


from Tony Wright:

"Not a lot written about it [aseasonal tropical forest] and no exact boundaries as several factors involved. Also varies in time with changing climate, part of the Congo currently have little variation in rainfall etc.
Pulled this from an article (below), re perpetual fruiting you are mostly looking at equatorial (little variation in day-length) and significant rainfall fairly evenly distributed through year. Tend to be niches within more extensive rain forest.

'There are two major types of wet tropical forests: equatorial evergreen rainforests and moist forests, which includes monsoon forests and montane/cloud forests. Equatorial rainforests, often considered the "real rainforest," are characterized by more than 80 inches (2,000 mm) of rain annually spread evenly throughout the year. These forests have the highest biological diversity and have a well-developed canopy "tier" form of vegetation. Roughly two-thirds of the world's tropical wet forests can be considered the equatorial type. These forests are near the equator where there is very little seasonal variation and the solar day is a constant length all year round. The greatest expanses of equatorial rainforest are found in lowland Amazonia, the Congo Basin, the Southeast Asian islands of Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea."
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