Q.A photograph shows a natural landscape with a broad, bare stretch of pale sandy soil in the foreground, dotted only with a few scattered tufts of yellow-brown dry grass. Along the far side runs a thin, broken line of scattered short thorny trees and scrub, some still green but most dried and stunted. Vegetation is sparse, drought-adapted and unevenly spaced, and the ground between plants is exposed. Based on this scene of dry sandy terrain with scanty xerophytic vegetation, answer:

Concept: reading the habitat from its vegetation

An ecosystem's abiotic conditions — chiefly water and temperature — decide which plants can grow there. Three clues in the scene point to one habitat type:

• Bare, pale, sandy substratum with large gaps of exposed ground → very low soil moisture.
• Sparse, scattered vegetation rather than a continuous cover → plants must be spaced out to share scarce water.
• Dry grass tufts and short, stunted, thorny trees → drought-tolerant (xerophytic) forms, not the lush broad-leaved plants of a moist habitat.

Why these point to a desert

Together these features indicate a region of low, erratic rainfall, high evaporation and extreme temperatures — the defining abiotic profile of a desert (arid) ecosystem. In such conditions only plants with water-conserving adaptations survive.

Characteristic plants (xerophytes) …

Read the scene for the same three clues this chapter uses to identify a habitat from its vegetation — substrate colour/moisture, canopy continuity, and the growth-form of the plants present — and match them, one clue at a time, against the known requirements of each candidate ecosyst …