Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Soil of Fiji Island


This is the color of Oxisol
soil with high concentration
iron (III), aluminiumoxides
and hydroxides

The Fiji Islands is commonly known as a vacation spot as well a very tropical island. Aside from the beautiful beach and amazing resorts, Fiji is divided up into three major classes of landforms: plains; low mountains and hills and high mountains. Lowland soils are usually below 600m with an average temperature over 71 degrees Fahrenheit. The soils in this particular region are formed usually formed on beach sand. Also, in this particular area, the soil can be very oxisol, which means that the soil contains high concentration of iron (III), aluminiumoxides and hydroxides. This process is called lateralization which is a great amount of aluminum and ferric hydroxides which then creates a reddish or a yellowish color way.


A small village in Suva, Fiji that shows the type of poverty they're in.

Having such oxisol soil obviously contains a lack of nutrients in this certain region of the island, however in addition to oxisol soil, erosion of land in Fiji has been a big problem over the years. In fact, business executive Lautoka and community worker Peter Drysdale says “The rate of soil erosion in the hills behind western town were the real causes of poverty, there was a connection between soil erosion, floods, dry season, crop yields and poverty.” The main island of Fiji is Viti Levu. Viti Levu is actually big enough to have two different climates on one different side of the island. In fact, the climate in Viti Levu is so unique its called the “Water Cycle of Fiji.” The mountains on Viti Levu are located towards the center of the island and evaporation happens on the West side of the mountain, then transporting to the East side of the island for precipitation. However, with this particular process after precipitation is processed and run off towards the west side of the island, everything starts becoming dryer and dryer. 

This water cycle is a representation of the water cycle at Fiji. The west side of the island is dryed off because of
all the precipitation that happened in the east side of the island.

Sources: 


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