Climatic factors; Fire and Atmosphere

Fire

Fire is naturally caused by lightning or volcanic activities, but most of the fire is caused by human activities. Sometimes it is also caused by falling down of rocks on dry leaves. Some of the effects of fire are:

• Fire burns vegetation.
• Fire kills soil organisms.
• Fire destroy organic matter and make the soil dry.
• Fire destroy animals and their habitat.
• Sometimes fire needs for seed germination of grasses like Cynodon.

Atmosphere

The atmosphere is the different gases envelope which surrounds the earth. It contains different types of gases like; oxygen, carbon dioxide, nitrogen and other gases.

Effects/Importance of Atmosphere

• Oxygen is essential for respiration in living organisms.
• The concentration of oxygen determines the distribution of animals in aquatic media and at high altitude.
• CO₂is essential for photosynthesis in plants.
• The high concentration of CO₂ act as a toxic effect in both aquatic and terrestrial animals.
• Nitrogen is an important constituent of protein and nucleic acid. The free atmospheric nitrogen is converted into nitrates by nitrogen fixing bacteria which is used by the plants as fertilizer.