4
Microclimates and vegetation
Climate on the broad scale, across hundreds of kilometers, brings about the broad-
scale distribution of vegetation types (Chapters 1 and 2). However, even looking at
the world much more locally, we see that there are also very substantial differences in
the average climate. For example, a south-facing slope has a different climate from a
north-facing one. The year-round temperature and rainfall conditions under a tree
will be different from those just a few meters away in the open. The temperature right
at the soil surface is different from the temperature a few centimeters under the
surface.
Such local differences make up what are known as "microclimates". These are
little climates that exist to some extent everywhere and vary on a scale of a few tens of
meters, a few centimeters or even a few millimeters. Such differences are all-important
to plants, and also the animals that live amongst them.
Microclimates help to explain part of the patchiness in vegetation that occurs on
smaller scales; they determine which plants can grow where. They are also important
in understanding how so many different species of plants manage to coexist, without
them all being out-competed by one strong species. And microclimates can explain
certain features of growth form, leaf shape and physiology of plants.
Furthermore, microclimates are the building blocks of climate. The broad-scale
climate is in part the product of these countless little climates, added up and averaged
out. If we really want to understand how climate on the global scale is made,
including how plants themselves help to form it (Chapters 3 and 4), we have to
understand microclimates.
4.1 WHAT CAUSES MICROCLIMATES?
Microclimates are caused by local differences in the amount of heat or water received
or trapped near the surface. A microclimate may differ from its surroundings by
80 Microclimates and vegetation [Ch. 4
receiving more energy, so it is a little warmer than its surroundings. On the other
hand, if it is shaded it may be cooler on average, because it does not get the direct
heating of the sun. Its humidity may differ; water may have accumulated there
making things damper, or there may be less water so that it is drier. Also the wind
speed may be different, affecting the temperature and humidity because wind tends to
remove heat and water vapor. All these influences go into "making" the micro-
climate.
4.1.1 At the soil surface and below
Soil exposed to the sun heats up during the day and cools during the night. Within a
few centimeters of the surface, the temperatures during the day can be extreme: 50 °C
or more in a dry desert climate when there is no water to evaporate and cool the soil.
Even high on mountains, exposed dark soil surfaces heated directly by the sun can
reach 80°C—hot enough to kill almost any lifeform. At night, the bare soil surface
cools off rapidly and by morning it may end up more than 20 °C cooler than during
the day. Yet, only 10 cm down the fluctuation between night and day is only about
5°C, because the day's heat is slow to travel through soil. Thus, the soil at depth has
its own quite separate climate: a microclimate distinct from that at the surface. Down
at 30 cm there is essentially no difference between temperature of night and day
because the soil is so well insulated from the surface; it stays at about the average
temperature of all the days and nights combined over the last few weeks. At about 1
meter depth, there is no difference between temperatures in winter and summer—the
soil remains right at the yearly average without fluctuation.
These differences are all-important to plant roots and the small animals and
microbes that live within the soil. At depth, the extremes of heat or cold are much
less and survival is often easier. But in high latitudes where the average annual
temperature is too low, below 0°C, the soil at depth always remains frozen, for it
is never reached by the heat of the summer. Water that once trickled down into the
soil forms a deep layer of ice, known as permafrost, that may stay in place for many
thousands of years. Where there is permafrost, roots cannot penetrate and plants
must make do with rooting into the surface layer above that at least thaws during the
summer.
4.1.2 Above the surface: the boundary layer and wind speed
If we now go upwards from the soil surface into the air above, there is another
succession of microclimates. When wind blows across bare soil or vegetation, there
is always some friction with the surface that slows the wind down. This slowing down
causes the air just above the soil to form a relatively still layer known as the boundary
layer. Within a few millimeters of the soil surface, the friction is severe enough that
the air is almost static (Figure 4.1). Air molecules are jammed against the surface, and
the molecules above them are jammed against the air molecules below, and so on.
Moving up a few centimeters or tens of centimeters above the surface, the dragging
influence of friction progressively lessens as the "traffic jam" of air molecules gets less
severe, and there is a noticeable increase in average wind speed because of this. In
