Periglacial Environment Essay

“Arid climates can be found on every continent. They range from hot and dry deserts that see almost no rain to semiarid scrub land where rain falls intermittently. Arid climates are not suitable for most life forms. Plants and animals that make their homes in arid climates have made special adaptations to the environment.”(Patrick, 2017) While periglacial environments is defined as “Periglacial literally means ‘edge’ of glacial. Periglacial environments are found on the fringes of polar or glacial environments, e.g. in parts of Siberia, Canada and Greenland. Periglacial areas experience permanently frozen ground (permafrost). During their brief warmer summers, the ground surface layer thaws – enabling hardy plants to grow. Periglacial environments …show more content…
The amount of rainfall and intensity of temperatures affect the vegetation which cause erosion and aggradation. (Dykema et al., n.d.) explain the effects of rainfall on St Croix “Heavier runoff and snow-melt will alter the structure of the river by limiting how much sunlight can reach the bottom due to more water laden with sand. Heavier runoff causes chemicals like Nitrogen and Phosphorus to enter the river systems. These chemicals could enter the St. Croix from surrounding agricultural plots and increase productivity to unhealthy …show more content…
While some areas will experience increased rainfall, which result in high amounts of runoff, others would experience low amounts of runoff due to decrease of rainfall. The more intense rainfall amounts would cause widespread flooding in some catchment areas. The yearly/annual flow will be changed or modified into snow packs. The increase in temperatures will cause more rain to fall instead of snow and would melt the snow in the season which would reduce natural reservoirs that fed rivers in drier months. “Increasing air temperatures are correlated to rising water temperatures and have begun to force snow-melt earlier in the year in the St. Croix River.” (Dykema et al.,