page_title: Nevis
section_title: Colonial deforestation
hierarchical_section_title: Nevis / Geography / Colonial deforestation
caption_attribution_description: English: This file was first taken by (and then released to wikpedia by) kayokayo.
context_page_description: Nevis is a small island in the Caribbean Sea that forms part of the inner arc of the Leeward Islands chain of the West Indies. Nevis and the neighbouring island of Saint Kitts constitute one country: the Federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis. Nevis is located near the northern end of the Lesser Antilles archipelago, about 350 kilometres east-southeast of Puerto Rico and 80 kilometres west of Antigua. Its area is 93 square kilometres and the capital is Charlestown.
  Saint Kitts and Nevis are separated by a shallow 3-kilometre channel known as "The Narrows". Nevis is roughly conical in shape with a volcano known as Nevis Peak at its centre. The island is fringed on its western and northern coastlines by sandy beaches which are composed of a mixture of white coral sand with brown and black sand which is eroded and washed down from the volcanic rocks that make up the island. The gently-sloping coastal plain has natural freshwater springs as well as non-potable volcanic hot springs, especially along the western coast.
  The island was named Oualie by the Caribs and Dulcina by the early British settlers.
context_section_description: During the 17th and 18th centuries, massive deforestation was undertaken by the planters as the land was initially cleared for sugar cultivation. This intense land exploitation by the sugar and cotton industry lasted almost 300 years, and greatly changed the island's ecosystem.
  In some places along the windswept southeast or "Windward" coast of the island, the landscape is radically altered compared with how it used to be in pre-colonial times. Due to extreme land erosion, the topsoil was swept away, and in some places at the coast, sheer cliffs as high as 25 metres (82 feet) have developed.
  Thick forest once covered the eastern coastal plain, where the Amerindians built their first settlements during the Aceramic period, complementing the ecosystem surrounding the coral reef just offshore. It was the easy access to fresh water on the island and the rich food source represented by the ocean life sheltered by the reef that made it feasible for the Amerindians to settle this area around 600 BC. With the loss of the natural vegetation, the balance in runoff nutrients to the reef was disturbed, eventually causing as much as 80 percent of the large eastern fringing reef to become inactive. As the reef broke apart, it, in turn, provided less protection for the coastline.
  During times of maximum cultivation, sugar cane fields stretched from the coastline of Nevis up to an altitude at which the mountain slopes were too steep and rocky to farm. Nonetheless, once the sugar industry was finally abandoned, vegetation on the leeward side of the island regrew reasonably well, as scrub and secondary forest.
caption: On the western coastal plain, looking south-southwest towards Charlestown
exif: {}