Outdoor Education - Biodiversity Impact On The Australian Land Caused By Aboriginies.

LEARNING ACTIVITY 3.2 Ð'- essay

The Australian land and its flora and fauna are very unique compared to other continents. There are three main reasons for this, biological isolation, geological stability and the erratic climate.

Firstly biological isolation has meant that over the last 40 million years Australia has been separated from all other continents, this was the cause from the separation from Gondwanaland around 55 million years ago. This means the Australian flora and fauna has been able to evolve in isolation from all the other continents. It was almost completely covered in rainforest, although much of it dried out as Australia moved towards the warmer climate. Australia's isolation from other landmasses has had an enormous impact of the unique plants and animals of this country and they are continuing to adopt to the varying conditions of Australia.

Another feature of the Australian continent that distinguishes it from most other continents is its geological stability. Australia is missing some of the features that take up large proportions of other continents, such as mountains, volcanoes and great permanent lakes, although over the last 300 million years all these features have existed or been active at some time, but a large percent of the land has been geologically stable .The majority of Australia's land mass is made of very old rock and very poor soils. The state of the soils has had a big influence of Australia's flora and fauna. Because of Australia's geological stability and hardly any volcanic activity only a few, low mountain ranges have been formed. Australia's landscape is very flat making it vulnerable to extremes such as flooding.

Lastly, Australia's erratic climate has affected the reproductive cycles and survival rates of the flora and fauna of Australia. Compared to other continents, Australia has a rough weather pattern