The Environment: Life, Land, and Sea in the Mediterranean Region

This blog is from a few days ago, but we have not had very much internet, so I'm posting it now

The article Sydney and I presented today was called, “The Environment: Life, Land, and Sea in the Mediterranean  Region.” This article seemed to be a chapter of a book, and gave a lot of background information about the climate and ecosystem of the Mediterranean and its surrounding countries.

It started off talking about the climate of the region, which many say is fairly agreeable. However, the sea contacts 3 different continents (Europe, Africa, and Asia), so there is a lot of variation when it comes to the weather. In Port Said, Egypt, for example, there is an average annual rainfall of 2 inches per year, but in Crikvenica, Croatia that number is increased to 181 inches per year. It also says that there are 2 main seasons, a mild rainy winter, and a hot dry summer with sea breezes. Although the weather has been pretty mild, we can vouch for the validity of the rainy winter, and just today it started raining during our tour of a lemon orchard. Despite this, we have seen many beautiful things that help us understand why the weather in this area is agreeable, with many palm trees and beautiful plants.

Also, it talks about the sea itself, and provides some interesting insights into what makes the sea unique. For example, it is the largest inland body of water in the world, and evaporation takes away an average of 150,000 cubic feet of water per second, which is replenished by water from the Atlantic Ocean coming through the strait of Gibraltar. Another fact I found interesting was the small mountains surrounding the sea are caused by the movement of the northward moving African tectonic plate and the Eurasian plate, resulting in a large amount of small mountains. We have definitely experienced this over the last few days, while we drove from city to city on the bus.

It then talks about the importance of plants and animals in the region. It compares Greece’s 6,000 flowering plant species, to Great Britain’s mere 2,113, despite having only half the land mass. It says this was caused by an ice age that scorched northern Europe as little as 11,000 years ago, while leaving the Mediterranean region relatively untouched. It talks about the different species of plants and animals which tend to thrive in certain regions, and the importance of the over 500 species of fish, of which 120 could be sold, creating a financially viable business in ancient times.

He also talked about how important it was for humans to limit their interference with this ecosystem, because an action can have a domino effect. He discusses the ecosystem like an eagle, who can adjust its flying technique if the wind changes slightly. But not even an eagle can survive a tornado, which is the amount of human interference seen today.