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East Africa Mountain Plates

Spectacular mountains rise above snow line in the equatorial region of East Africa. Included among these are Africa's highest peak, Mt Kilimanjaro (5,895 m or 19,340 ft) in Tanzania; Mt. Kenya (5199 m or 17,058 ft) just 200 miles to the north in Kenya; and the Ruwenzori range (with peaks above 5000m or 16,000 ft)--the fabled Mountains of the Moon--along the Uganda-Zaire border.

When you climb a high mountain, you quickly become aware of the impact of cooling temperature and higher precipitation on local vegetation types. In 1889, C. Hart Merriam studied the relationship between mean annual temperature and the distribution of flora and fauna in the western United States. He recognized that similar zones or belts of vegetation occurred with both increasing latitude and increasing elevation. He called these belts Life Zones.

Altitudinal zonation of vegetation is obvious on high peaks around the world. And while there may be similarity between the structure of the vegetation in these various elevation belts with that in latitudinal belts, there are usually major differences in the species present in each. In other words, the elevational plant communities are not exact replicas of the latitudinal plant associations. Mountain climates vary in critical ways from regional climate types. Consider the differences in annual and diurnal patterns of day length, angle of incoming solar radiation, intensity of direct radiation, and precipitation on a towering mountain peak near the equator, for example, and on the Arctic coast of Alaska.