Clouds form preferentially over native vegetation

The replacement of native vegetation for agriculture leads to significant changes in land surfacecharacteristics, such as albedo, surface roughness and canopy resistance. These land surface changes inducechanges in the atmospheric boundary layer. It is shown that in Western Australia, this change in surfacecharacteristics and in particular, the albedo, has reduced the occurrence of convective cloud formation throughlimiting the vertical development of the boundary layer.