Two trees of the same species have been growing in a forest for ten years. One of the trees is located on a valley floor. The other tree is located near the top of a windswept ridge. What would you expect to be true of these trees?

Answer : The tree on the ridge will be shorter with thinner trunk to that on the valley.

Explanation:

A ridge can be described as a narrow raised or elevated part of the land, while the valley floor is a lower land between two hills.

The rate of erosion on the ridge will be high, because its sides are sloppy, thereby , the amount of nutrients there will be small, because most of the nutrients would have been washed away by erosion.  

Meanwhile, all the nutrients that have been washed away from the ridges will be accumulating in the valley floor, thereby, making the the quantity of the nutrients to be higher to that of the ridge.

In this case, a tree on the ridge will not have access to enough nutrients, and this will make it shorter with thinner trunk to that of the valley , which have access to abundance of nutrients.

affects the water bodies: excessive use of fertilizers causes eutrophication. the fertilizers which are used on plants affect the quality of land on which it is used, further causing erosion of soil. the fertilizers used on plants contain harmful chemical fumes which affect the environment.