Largely pristine world regions today
Geographical discoveries
978-3-14-100890-6 | Page 29 | Ill. 4
Overview
Even today, there are regions on earth that are only very sparsely populated or not populated at all. These include northern North America and Greenland, Northern Asia (especially Siberia), the Sahara, the Amazon Basin, inland Australia (especially the Central Australian Lowlands) and Antarctica.
Inhospitable living conditions
This is due to the inhospitable living conditions that prevail in these regions. These conditions are primarily determined by the climate. The Sahara and inland Australia are hostile deserts. In the Northern Hemisphere, coniferous forests, low rainfall, large temperature fluctuations and short, cool summers are characteristic of these areas. This makes regular human coexistence difficult and does not attract settlers. Instead, these large regions are characterised by the migration of young people. They are structurally weak rural areas and thus economic crisis areas. Due to their nature, the soils are hardly fertile and cannot be used by their own efforts and without high financial expenditure. Therefore, the population in these areas changes little despite global population growth.
Amazon basin
A counter-example to the barren, cold habitats is the Amazon Basin, which is also only sparsely populated in its centre by diverse indigenous peoples. Here, however, plant productivity is very high due to the climate. It is dominated by evergreen swamp forest on flooded plains and coasts, high rainfall and uniformly high temperatures. However, due to deforestation and population growth, the area of largely untouched regions is increasingly shrinking. Settlers, for example, were allocated plots of land for farming as part of government settlement measures to open up areas in the Amazon region. These farmers and cattle breeders endanger the forests, which are the livelihood of the indigenous (native) population, through large-scale clearing. Other people came to the region as part of industry and trade. The establishment of a free trade zone in Manaus, for example, attracted many newcomers.
