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Biomes
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The biome is a major terrestrial assemblage of plants, animals, and microorganisms that has a characteristic appearance and occurs over large geographical areas on the earth's surface.
Biomes are largely determined by combination of temperature (in term determined by latitude) and rainfall, as indicated by the following diagram:
Biome diagram from Environmental
Biology - Grasslands page
for a geographical representation see the Holdridge
Life-Zone map at the
NPP
Database
Biomes can be divided up in several ways, but it is most usual to list six or seven: (from tropical to polar): tropical rainforest, savanna, desert, grassland. temperate deciduous forest, taiga (boreal forest), tundra. These ecosystems differ dramatically from one another, largely because of climatic factors.
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Mediterranean/chaparral |
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The ocean can be considered an eighth biome, or even a succession of biomes, determined by depth and proximity to the continental shelf. Sometimes freshwater ecosystems are also considered biomes.
The biomes mentioned above are those currently in existence on earth. However, some of them have not always been around. The first forests appeared during the late Devonian, modern deciduous trees in the Cretaceous, and grasslands only in the Miocene epoch. Biomes during the Jurassic, the Permian or the Carboniferous were very different. Fern savannas for example seem have served as vast prairies which provided food for herds of grazing sauropod dinosaurs.
During the Holocene biomes have changed radically. Two artificial biomes could be added, the agricultural and the urban landscapes, as environments modified by man.
Biomes
- annotated list of links
Biomes
- huge list of links
Biomes
- list of links
Modern
Ecosystems - has material on Biomes
mapsGlobal
land environments since the last interglacial by Jonathan Adams
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