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Concept
Moorland
Summary
Moorland or moor is a type of habitat found in upland areas in temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands and montane grasslands and shrublands biomes, characterised by low-growing vegetation on acidic soils. Moorland, nowadays, generally means uncultivated hill land (such as Dartmoor in South West England), but also includes low-lying wetlands (such as Sedgemoor, also South West England). It is closely related to heath, although experts disagree on what precisely distinguishes these types of vegetation. Generally, moor refers to highland and high rainfall zones, whereas heath refers to lowland zones which are more likely to be the result of human activity.
Moorland habitats mostly occur in tropical Africa, northern and western Europe, and neotropical South America. Most of the world's moorlands are diverse ecosystems. In the extensive moorlands of the tropics, biodiversity can be extremely high. Moorland also bears a relationship to tundra (where the subsoil is permafrost or permanently frozen soil), appearing as the tundra and the natural tree zone. The boundary between tundra and moorland constantly shifts with climatic change.
Heathland and moorland are the most extensive areas of semi-natural vegetation in the British Isles. The eastern British moorlands are similar to heaths but are differentiated by having a covering of peat. On western moors, the peat layer may be several metres thick. Scottish "muirs" are generally heather moors, but also have extensive covering of grass, cotton-grass, mosses, bracken and under-shrubs such as crowberry, with the wetter moorland having sphagnum moss merging into bog-land.
There is uncertainty about how many moors were created by human activity. Oliver Rackham writes that pollen analysis shows that some moorland, such as in the islands and extreme north of Scotland, are clearly natural, never having had trees, whereas much of the Pennine moorland area was forested in Mesolithic times. How much the deforestation was caused by climatic changes and how much by human activity is uncertain.
Official source
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