The Ituri Forest
The Ituri Forest is found on the northeastern lip of the Zaire River Basin. This forest has the highest number of species of any forest in Africa. 15% of these species are endemic. The Ituri forest is bordered to the north by savannah, to the west by the highlands of the Western Rift Valley, and to the south by lowland forests. The average temperature is 31°C (88°F) and the average humidity is about 85%. Much of the vegetation in the Ituri forest is found in the form of hardwood legumes in the Caesalpineaceae subfamily. The upper canopy can reach 50 meters, and because of it's discontinuous nature, light is able to penetrate to the ground in many places, allowing Marantaceae herbs to grow on the forest floor (Bailey 1991:9).
Humans inhabited the area now encompassing the Ituri Forest as long ago as 40,700 B.C.E., though the ecology of the region was quite different at the time (Bailey 1991:9).
The Ituri Province in The Democratic Republic of Congo.
| Landscape composition of the Ituri forest determined using LANDSAT TM image analysis. | |
|---|---|
| Feature | % Cover |
| Mature forest | 89.43 |
| Secondary forest | 6.09 |
| Villageslgrass | 1.67 |
| Agriculture | 1.63 |
| Cloudslshadow | 0.36 |
| Open water | 0.30 |
| Roadslsand | 0.07 |
| Granite outcrops | 0.06 |
Table Taken from (Wilkie and Curran 1991)
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Works Cited
Bailey, Robert C.
The Behavioral Ecology of Efe Pygmy Men in the Ituri Forest, Zaire. Ann Arbor: Regents of the University of Michigan, 1991.
Curran, Bryan and Wilkie, David
1991 Why Do Mbuti Hunters Use Nets? Ungulate Hunting Efficiency of Archers and Net-Hunters in the Ituri Rain Forest. American Anthropologist, New Series 93(3): 680-689.
Images from www.wcs.org and answers.com.
