Biomes Flashcards
What is a biome?
Biomes are large-scale ecosystems that have distinctive vegetation. Different regions of the world have different climates and different eco-systems.
What is the hot desert?
The hot desert biome is 15o - 35o north and south of the equator.
There is almost no rainfall, temperatures are very high in the day and freezing at night.
The Sahara desert is an example of this.
Cactuses and other plants with evolutionary adaptations to deal with the lack of water are the only plants that survive.
What are the grasslands?
The grassland biome is usually found between +23.5° and -23.5%deg; latitude.
In grasslands, there is a wet and a dry season and as you would expect, the dominant vegetation is grass.
There are few trees in grassland.
The American Midwest, the Argentinian pampas and South Africa are examples of the grassland biome.
Savannah grasslands are found between the tropics.
Temperate grasslands are found at higher latitudes.
What are the forests?
Temperate deciduous forests are found in Europe, the USA, and China. Temperate deciduous forests can be identified by their four seasons, with the trees in the deciduous forests shedding their leaves in winter.
Rain falls throughout the year.
Tropical forests are found near the equator. Tropical rainforests are found in areas like the Amazon jungle or the Daintree Rainforest in Australia.
They are usually located between the tropics, where it is always hot and the humidity/moisture is high.
Of all the forest types, boreal forests are found at the highest latitudes.
What is the tundra?
Environments like the Arctic, Alaska, Finland and places close to the North Pole are tundra biomes. In other words, places with high latitudes.
They get very long days in summer and very short days in winter (only a few hours of sunlight).
Winter temperatures are usually below freezing, it doesn’t rain much and the dominant types of vegetation are grasses and moss.
Just beneath the soil, there is is a permafrost layer (ground that is always frozen).
What affects the distribution of biomes?
Drainage, altitude, soil tyle, rock type
What is the climate in tropical rainforests?
There aren’t really seasons in tropical rainforests.
All year, the temperature is in the range of 21°C and 30°C.
There is lots of rain/precipitation in tropical rainforests. For example, there’s roughly 80 inches (2,000mm) of rainfall each year in the Amazon rainforest.
Rainforests have up to 80 inches of rainfall each year.
This heavy rain washes away minerals and nutrients from the soil.
This means that the soil left behind is infertile (bad for crop growth).
What’s the flora like in tropical rainforests?
The climate is almost the same in all months, so plants grow all year. Most plants in rainforests are evergreen (and don’t shed their leaves in winter).
There is a battle for sunlight because trees put each other in the shade (and trees need sunlight to grow). Because of this, trees grow to be very tall (up to 46 metres high).
There is interdependence between the vegetation living on the forest floor. For example, plants called epiphytes (vegetation or plants that live off and grow on other plants) are common.
What is the fauna like in tropical rainforests?
Rainforests are full of biodiversity.
Mammals like Gorillas (in the Congo), Jaguars (in the Amazon rainforest) and Sloths (in Central America) live in rainforests.
Reptiles and amphibians like frogs, snakes, lizards, and crocodiles inhabit tropical rainforests.
There are diverse insect and bird species in rainforests.
Many of these animals have adapted by evolution & natural selection to survive in the tropical rainforest biome.
