Biomes/Canadian Ecosystems

Question 1

Biomes

Answer 1

area classified based on dominant plant species, communities and climates

usually caterogized based on abiotic and biotic elemts

Precipitationa dn temp will deine biomes

Question 2

Climate Lattitude

Answer 2

lattitude- locations distance from equator in degrees

Variation associated with solar radition - temp and precipiation patterns

Variation in climate lattiude is associated with differences in the intensity of solar raditaion, wind patterns and associated pecitpation patterns at diff lattitudes

Variation in climate in terestrial systems can be found over altityde and is infleucned by the oceans
- Air pressure decreases with altitude, causing air to expand and become cooler
- water has high heat capcty which allows nearby systems to not heat or cool as easily

Question 3

Rain Shadow Effect

Answer 3

Mountain ranges create this effect
Produces extremes in precipitation on eitehr side of a mountain range

Warm, humid air from oceans moves eastward toward mountains, as air rises over mountain it cools, lowering it dew point (ability to carry water) and it rains, and by the time it reaches the otehr side its lost all water and is now dry - desert

Question 4

Lattitude

Answer 4

Variation associated withs olar radiatiion - temp and precipitation patterns
Other things associated with precipitation and temp = altitude and how far inland

Lattitudinal (north or south of equator)

Question 5

toporgophic

Answer 5

Physical features of an area

Question 6

Tundra

Answer 6

• Treeless land - located above the treeline
  
  • Uplands
  • Treeless mountain○ Very cold temperatures, below freezing for most of the year, with seasonal temperature variation
    Very little precipitation but lots of sun
    ○ Dry desert like conditions with little seasonal variability in rainfall
    ○ Further north, direr it gets, descending side of the polar cell - air has already dropped most of its water
    ○ Day length - sunlight - is also seasonally variable - less in winter○ Impact on primaryproducers: permafrost - soil is frozen, short growing season, soil is nutreint poor therefore low productivty

      § Active layer - the top layer of soil that thaws in the summer - where biological activty occurs
          □ Solifuction - thawed upper layer of soil when wet flows downslope to form terraces - damages root systems of plants and fills in animal burrows
      § Deep permafrost layer - slow biological acivty, impedes water flow and root development 
          □ Polygon landform - frost pushes stones up and out to form a patteerned surface of frost hummocks, frost boilds, stripes, and polugons
    
      § Polar grassland with up to 100% plant cover and wet to moist soil Polar desert: less than 250 mm of pecipitaion, dry soil, les sthan 5% plant cover 

    ○ Adaptions to a cold, dry, windy envirnment with limited food resources
    ○ Fur - thick layers like the musk ox
    Reduced surface area: volume - overall body shape, appendages
    ○ Herbivores - consumes plants and lichen
    ○ Carnivorous - consume terrestrial and aquatic animals
    ○ Camouflage - small animals have coats that change colour during the summer and winter to better hide from predators
• Hibernation/Dormancy - reduce metabolism whne food is scarce
  ○ Migrate - most animals inhabit the tundra temporaily

Question 7

Active Layer

Answer 7

The top layer of soil that thaws in the summer

Question 8

Specialist

Answer 8

Animals that are adpated to a specific set of environmental conditions

Question 9

Alpine

Answer 9

• Alpine tundra is a cold, windy, high elevation biome that cannot support tree growth
  
  • Treeline - elavtion/latitude beyond which trees cant grow
  • Transition zone - smaller sparsely growing trees
  • Timberline - elevation/latitude below which trees form a forest with a closed canopy○ Cold, windy and dry like the artic tundra
    ○ Most preciptation falls as snow but the high winds redistribute it
    § Snowfileds accumulate on the lee side of mountains while ridgelines tend to be snow free
    ○ Local climate varies with lattude, altitude and proximity to an ocean

      § Growing season 45-90 days 
      § High winds cause soil erosion
      § High winds and solar radiation cause high evaporation of water Tehrefore low productivty

    ○ Species diveristy is relatively higher than found in artic tundra
    ○ Very isolated systems due to elevation
    ○ Highly varied microhabits due to abiotic conditions associated with topography
    ○ High rate of endemism (speciies found only in one place)
    Alpine ecosystems cover 3.5% of global land area and host 4% of all flowering plant species○ Cold, cry, windy habitat with limted food availability or standing water
    ○ Similar adaptions to cold found in artic tundra animals
    Aditional adpations to living in mountainous terain- split, rough hooves to climb rocky ledges

Question 10

Endemnism

Answer 10

Species only found in one place

Question 11

Boreal Forest (Taiga)

Answer 11

• Key definidng feature is coniferous trees
  
  • Boreal region is arguably the largest terestrial biome on earth, coeing 14% of earths land area
  • Taiga - mongolaim - land of the little sticks
  • Boreal - latin - denotes the god of north wind
  • Largest biome in Canada - 60% of land area and 75% of forests○ Cold temps with marked seasonal fluctations
    § Avg -20 in the winter and 18 in the summer
    ○ Low precipiation - most falls as rain during summer
    § 38-50cm
    § Precipatyoon is greater than evapration which allows wetlands
    ○ Continental climate - wide rang of temps, low humidity, low preciptation
    § Coldest winter temps may be lower than those in tundra

      § Short growth season - 50-150 days with long periods of sunlight
      § Permafrost
      § Soil is nutreint poor, shallow and acidic; often waterlogged in summer
      § Low productivty  High standing biomass

    ○ Comprised of relatvely young, evenly aged stands of trees due to consistent cycle of natrual disturbances
    ○ Fire:
    § Often caused by lighting - lots of flamable dried needles in the floor
    § Recycles nutrients back into soil
    § Adpations - resin sealed cones (jack pine) vehetaive growth (aspen)
    ○ Insect Outbreaks:
    § Spruce budrwom
    § Typically feed on current year growth of needles
    § Outbreaks occuring for a millenia - not sure what causes and duration is variable○ Disturbances create species diveristy over time: opens space for pioneer and other early succesional plant species and provides new habitat for consumers
    ○ Fire:
    § Provides dead logs as habitat and food for decomposers and their predators
    § Dead trees provide nesting sites for birds and snmall mammals
    ○ Insect outbreaks:
    § At least three species of warblers have distrbutions that overlap with spruce budworm outbreaks, which provide a major food source
    ○ Adaptions to lviing in a cold heaviliy wooded seasonal climate:
    § Fur - thick layers like in wood bison
    § Herbivores - broad diet, cosnume lichen, conifers - ex. Spruce grouse
    § Camouflage - small mammals have coats that change colour during the summer and winter to better hunt/hide from predators - ex. Ermine
    § Snowshoes - ability to move on snow - ex. Canada lynx
    § Hibernation/dormancy - reduce metabolism when food is scarce - ex. Wood frog
    Migrate - some animals inhabit the higher latitudes temporarily - ex. Dark eyed junco

Question 12

Oceans

Answer 12

The largest areas of marine waters, loosely defined by continental boundaries but are all interconnected

5 oceans: Pacific, Atlantic, Arctic, Indian and Southern

Question 13

Marginal Seas

Answer 13

Divisions of the oceans, often bounded by islands or peninusulas

Affetced by regional climate patterns (precipitation and evaporation)
More river input, less exchange with open oceans

Question 14

Neritic and Oceanic Province

Answer 14

Neritic - open water over continental shelves (near shore)

Oceanic - open water over deeper ocean basisn

Question 15

The Deep - Physical properties

Answer 15

• ocean system change as you go deeper
  Clines – changes over depth
  Pycnocline is density and pressure – deepr in ocean, more weight pressed on you – have to be adapted to this pressure
  Thermocline is temperature – deeper is colder
  Salinity – changes as you go down
  Oxygen highest at the top - depeleted as you go down – organisms use it for cellular respiration at too
  Oxugen minimum zone – levels will climb as you go further – as you go deeper, number of organusms using oxygen there is lower

Question 16

Oxygen Minimal Zone

Answer 16

persistent layers in the water column that have low oxygen concentration due to biological, chemical, and physical processes

Question 17

Deep Sea Floor

Answer 17

Some animals venture between the deep sea and shallower areas
Most of sea bottom is covered with sediments, skeletones of organisms (whale fall) and debris
Pressure is great, ranging from 300-600atm on the abyssal floor and 1000atm in trenches
Little dissolved o2

Pressure in teh deep:
- Lower metabolic rates
- Lowered growth rates
- Lowered reprodutive rates
- Longer life spans
- Gigantism
- these trends because they need to conserve energy

Question 18

Tidal zones

Answer 18

Spray/splash zone
Upper intertidal zone
Middle intertidal zone
Lower intertidal zone
Subtidal zone

Animals must adapt to ever changing conditions with both submerged and exposed (to the atompherpe) and adaptations

Question 19

Surface Currents

Answer 19

Ocean surface currents are driven mainly by wind
Currents are created by a trasnfer of momentom from wind to water
Stable wind pattersn - like the trades or westerlies - mainatin large, slow moving oceanic currents

Question 20

Westerlies

Answer 20

Wind from the west to the east
30 and 60 degrees in lattitude

Question 21

Easterlies - Eastely trade winds

Answer 21

Winds at the equator
Moving east to west

Question 22

Coriolis effect

Answer 22

Deflection of air as a result of the area around the equator moving faster than the area aroind the poles

(earth is a globe fatter at the equator and the earth spins to the right)

Things in the northern hemisphere deflect to the right

Things in the eastern hemisphere deflect to the left

ex. in the northern hemisphere, when air goes into the hurricane, air is deflected to the right which moves the hruicane counterclockwise. but in the southernhemisphere the air is being deflected to the left so hurricane moves clockwise

Question 23

Surface currents

Answer 23

Trade winds are the stable east to west blowing winders that occcur between the 30n and 30s lattitudes

Hadley cells: high temp rises, and falls at 30 degrees in latitude
30 degrees is high pressure zone –Air then moves back to equator
Equator is low pressure zone
Air moves back to equator from high pressure
The air deflect to the right
From souther hemisphere, the air will deflect to the left
Eevrything ends up going left creating the easterlies tradewinds

At 60 dgerees more low pressure system
Air goes from high to kiw pressure so it goes to the left at north and to the right at southern creating westerlies

Question 24

Boundary Currents

Answer 24

Created by currents being obstructed by land masses

Question 25

Gyres

Answer 25

Huge circular current patterns formed by opposing stable boundary currents

Question 26

Eddies

Answer 26

Smaller, temporary circular currents

And they are the swirly patterns you see here along what is called the Gulf Stream, the major boundary current that moves up the eastern coasts of North America
Eddies form for a variety of reasons these including the fluid dynamics of flowing around an obstacle, like an island
So that warm water is pushing up and outward, because it’s density is less than the water around it and then it pushes that water in a clockwise spin driven by the Coriolis effect
While cold core eddies, who’s cold central waters are pulling water downward and towards the center of the eddy spin counter-clockwise
These smaller, swirling eddies can range greatly in size from only a few centimeters to a few kilometers in diameter
And they can last for only seconds or for years

Question 27

Surface Currents redistribute heat

Answer 27

All organisms have thermal tolerance limits
and we’ll talk a little bit more about those when we look at adaptations organisms have to living in the marine environment
But those thermal tolerance limits affect the distribution of species, or where they are found in the oceans
Photosynthetic primary producers are also affected by temperature
For the most part, primary production is greater in warmer waters
So the distribution of heat as a resource, affects the distribution of organisms associated with their tolerance for certain temperatures
But also in terms of where the food is
More primary production means more nutrients and more food for higher order consumers

Thermal overlay of a satellite image of the Gulf Stream in the western Atlantic ocean off the coast of North America {#}
The warm water nearer to the equator is being pushed up against north America here and driven northward in this boundary current called the Gulf Stream
Warm water upwards along the coast and then towards Europe
Warmer, green surface water being pushed up from the equatorial current and towards Europe and Scandinavia

Average temperatures on earth are largely driven by differences in sunlight intensity associated with the increasing angle of incidence of the sun with latitude
So we’d expect areas at higher latitudes to be colder than those at lower latitudes and places found at similar latitudes should have similar average annual temperatures
But let’s look at and example here in the Atlantic
For us in the terrestrial world, we would expect that the average temperatures in say Happy Valley Goose Bay Labrador over here {#}
And London England over here {#}
Would be similar because they are at the same latitude
But, if you’ve ever heard about the climate in either place, you know that it is much warmer in England than it is in Labrador
And part of the reason for this is the Gulf Stream, which brings warm water up the coast of north America and then over to Europe following the north Atlantic current
Another current, the Labrador current {#}
which is part of a subpolar gyre, carries cold water down towards Labrador, consequently cooling that part of the world
The combination of these two gyres, and these currents
Causes Labrador to be much colder than western Europe, despite being at the same latitude
That affects our terrestrial climate
But it also affects the distribution and migration patterns of organisms in the north Atlantic
Because they have thermal preferences and tolerances
Warmer water means more food!

Question 28

Surface currnets redistribute nutreints and dissolved gasses

Answer 28

Surface currents also redistribute dissolved oxygen and gasses
Primary productivity tends to be higher in warmer waters
producing more nutrients and dissolved oxygen for higher order consumers
Currents serve the role of carrying this warm water and those primary producers
as they are planktonic organisms, which cannot swim against currents
from warm, highly productive areas like the equatorial waters towards the north and south along those boundary currents
This is part of the reason, to use the north western again as an example {#}
That the Grand Banks off the coast of eastern Canada are so productive
So this was, historically, an area with lots of productive fisheries, including Atlantic Cod
The gulf stream carries that warm water and nutrients up here from the warmer equatorial waters
And the Labrador current brings nutrients and dissolved oxygen down from the arctic waters
These two currents coming together is what makes this area more productive than it might otherwise be

Question 29

Surface currents carry plankton and debris

Answer 29

Surface currents basically drag along anything that can’t swim
This means plankton
So nearly all the primary producers at the surface of the ocean are planktonic, as are the primary consumers
So they are carried around in these currents basically as giant nutrient sources for nekton, which often seek out these currents
Not for the mobility it gives them, but for the food source it offers
This is why you will see whale migration patterns that follow currents
Or, another example are higher order consumers like the Bluefin Tuna, which feeds on smaller fish
Here are the migration routes of the Northern Pacific Bluefin Tuna {#}
Which roughly follow the currents that make up the northern and southern pacific gyres
Travelling from their spawning or reproductive areas off the eastern coast of China all the way over to California
But notice they avoid the middle of the pacific?
Because of the north pacific gyre, the waters there are very unproductive and don’t have a lot of nutrients
The middle of the pacific is essentially a nutrient desert

But, during at least part of their journey, these Bluefin Tuna are travelling as meroplankton {#}
Meroplankton are the planktonic life stages of marine organisms
Like the blue fin tuna here {#}
Typically these are larval or juvenile forms of organisms
That simply are not big enough or strong enough to swim yet, like our baby tuna here
Or they are the planktonic larva of sessile organisms
So organisms that will settle out of the water column and either attach themselves to the ocean floor
Corals are a good example of this
Or they will simply not move very far as adults, like these sea urchins

Surface currents do carry just about anything that is floating around near the surface of the water
That includes pleuston that have adapted to floating around
Like these jellyfish {#}
Or sargassum, the floating seaweed in the Sargasso sea {#}
Which is associated with the north Atlantic gyre
But this also includes all of our garbage…

Question 30

Pleuston

Answer 30

organisms that living on the surface of water

ex. sargassum

Question 31

Ekman Transport

Answer 31

The net directional movement of water blwon by the wind resulting from a combo of friction and coriolis effect

Ocean currents move perpendicular to wind currents

Bends to right in northern
Bends to left in southern

Question 32

Upwelling

Answer 32

Brings cooler nutrient rich and oxygen rich water ip to the surface of the ocean

(water hits coastline and goes down)

Wind going north, air deflecting right, water going dwon, then goes on the bottom, hits side, comes up and then again deflect right (downwelling to upwelling)

downwelling brings o2 down and upwelling site brings nutreints from the bottom to top - productivty is high at upwelling sites

Cold water at upwelling and high nutreints - so at coastline of california there is upwelling and high conc of algal and phytoplankton growth causing lots of chlrophyl

At the equator, easterly winds - in northern hemisphere teh water is delfecting right and in southern its deflecting left so there is an upwelling site at the equator and lots of chrlophyll conc