The alpine tundra is truly an amazing biome. I chose it because I am fascinated by the series of mountain ranges around the United States. One day I hope to climb to their peaks and experience this biome for myself. The flora and fauna native to this biome are truly built to survive the harsh cold and high altitudes with little oxygen, little heat, and lots of wind. Many of the plants are low to the ground and many of the animals native to this biome have long fur coats surrounding a layer of fat. Abiotic factors play a massive role in plant distribution in this biome. The abiotic factor of extreme cold and gusty winds makes it difficult for trees or any tall plants to grow. Most plants have adapted to grow close to the ground. When plants are closer to the ground they can absorb any warmth they can from the earth and stay out of the wind. The Bureau of Land Management (2008) explains, “Because the habitat of alpine vegetation is subject to intense radiation, wind, cold, snow, and ice, it …show more content…
Due to the conditions there isn’t one dominant plant species in this biome. However, most plants are low to the ground with large rhizome and root biomasses. According to Alpine Plant Life: Functional Plant Ecology of High Mountain Ecosystems (2003), "The roots and rhizomes not only function in water and nutrient absorption but also play a very important role in over-winter carbohydrate storage”. For example, the cushion plant, which looks like a large clump of moss, is really a plant that only grows to be less than an inch tall to avoid the cold winds. Other plants instead of being the typical green color, are red. The red colored pigments allow the plants to turn all of the light energy at high altitudes, into heat. It is remarkable that in this harsh biome, there are any plants at all. However, plants have adapted and now are able to thrive in these harsh
Many variations and species of plants can be found all around the world and in different habitats. These variations and characteristics are due to their adaptations to the natural habitat surrounding them. In three of many climatic zones, the arid, tropical and temperate zone, plants that vary greatly from each other are found in these locations. In this experiment, we’ll be observing the connection between the adaptations of the plants to their environment at the Fullerton Arboretum. The arboretum is a space containing numerous plants from different environments. The plants are carefully looked after and organized into their specific habitat. Therefore, we’ll be able to take a look at the plants within multiple
In conclusion the animals which exist in the extreme climates of the world have adapted to be able to live well in these habitats and will probably stay living in these habitats for a long time to come.
Abiotic factors of the arctic tundra are strong winds, little precipitation. Also very short summer days, instead there are very long and cold winters. There is poor soil and a permafrost which is a layer of permanently frozen subsoil. The biotic factors are that plants and mosses have to adapt to the long and cold winters, since the sun does not come up during winter. Also the wildlife animal that live there are Snowy owls, reindeer, white foxes, lemmings, arctic hares, wolverines, caribou, migrating birds, mosquitoes, black flies, and the chief predator the Polar
The plants growing among Montana’s peaks and valleys range from tall evergreen trees to grasses. The mountainous areas are covered with forests. However, at each level, from the mountaintops to the valleys, there are different, distinct collections of plant life. The mountainsides are largely covered with towering spruce, pine, cedar, and Douglas fir trees (Av2
There’s wet tundra, alpine tundra, glaciers and iceland, coastal western hemlock/ Sitka spruce forest, and post-glacial meadows and thickets. As for marine ecosystems, continental shelf, wave-beaten coasts, and fjord estuaries have been
The Taiga Biome is a large, naturally occurring community of flora and fauna occupying a major part of both Siberia and North America. It is usually found at high elevations at more temperate latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere. It is the largest terrestrial biome on earth, covering around 50 million acres of land (NP, UC Santa Barbara). It is known for its subarctic climate that ranges between -51 to -1 °C in the winter and -21 to 7 °C in the summer. The two main season found in the taiga are summer and winter as autumn and spring are usually very short and barely noticeable. Winter makes up around six months of the year, with only around 50-100 frost-free days during the summer. Summer is also the season during which the taiga receives the most precipitation in form of rain. The remainder is made up of snow and dew, which adds up to around 30-85cm of precipitation yearly (NP, S.L. Woodward).
energy as yellow would. Red will have a very high photosynthetic rate. even though it has the longest wavelength and therefore carries the least energy it will be greatly absorbed so a lot of the light energy will be used rather than reflected. Prediction graph. [ IMAGE] Photosynthetic equation =
The climate of the tundra is characterized by harsh winters. The average temperature in the tundra area is about –27 degrees. But what is even worse are the long night. At nights the lowest temperture recorded was –67.36 degrees. There are even times in the year when the sun doesn’t come up for days. In the tundra we have little snow and even less rainfall. The rainfall is about a quarter inch in a yearly rainfall. Even though the tundra’s winters are long a harsh there summers are the shortest season of all. Do to the terrible weather and climate in the tundra their animals and plant life is very limited.
some lower areas of the Tundra will defrost at which point most of the flora and
The climates on earth are very unique depending on their placement on the planet's axis. No one really realizes how different they can be or how similar they really are. The ice caps and the arid climates are two examples of unique climates. Arid is another word for dry land, the ice caps are the cold climates. The Arid climates are covering nearly 33% of the earth’s land. The ice caps are only at the poles directly north and south of the equator, but this climate covers nearly 20% of the earth. These two climates sound very different, but no one would ever know the similarities of them until they really looked into the facts.
Ice is one of the major abiotic factor in the arctic, without the ice, many organism such as polar bears would be left without a place to live and even with seals, it would be unsafe for them because without ice, there will be no places to hide from predators. Other factors are permafrost, strong winds, poor soil, long winters and short summer.
Arctic tundra is located in the northern hemisphere, encircling the North Pole and extending south to the Coniferous forests of the Taiga. The arctic is known for its cold, desert-like conditions. The growing season ranges from 50 to 60 days. The average winter temperature is -34° C (-30° F), but the average summer temperature is 3-12° C (37-54° F), which enables this biome to sustain life. Rainfall may vary in different regions of the arctic. Yearly precipitation, including mel...
A tundra is a biome where trees and plants don't grow as much because of the cold freezing temperatures. The tundra has lots of warm animals that contain a lot of fur because of how cold the temperatures are there. There are mountain goats,sheep,marmots, and birds that live up there. The only way those animals survive is by eating the lying insects and eating the plants that rarely grow there. The shelter for these animals is going under a rock because the rocks protect them from the wind and it's warmer for them. Also other animals that live up in the tundra is Arctic foxes, polar bears, gray wolves, caribou, snow geese, and musk-oxen. The Tundra has harsh winters and hard summers. During the summer it last 50-60 days and it is sunny 24/7.
Photosynthesis is, “the process by which plants convert light energy from the Sun into chemical energy in the form of carbohydrates” thus producing, “food for all living organisms, directly or indirectly” (Zheng). Photosynthesis has been examined in thousands of different ways. Many of these experiments include studying the rate of photosynthesis and pigment accumulation by obtaining plants and then stressing their light and nutrient intake (Okunlola and Adekunle). Photosynthetic pigments reflect and absorb different wavelengths of visible light based off their polarity. In this experiment, we studied photosynthetic pigments, first, by determining polarity and then, by measuring the amount of light of a given wavelength that a pigment absorbs. We used two methods in this experiment, chromatography and spectrophotometry. Chromatography “is a method used to separate mixtures of substances into their components” (lab book) and spectrophotometry is the use of a spectrophotometer to measure transmittance of light through a liquid. We used our knowledge of polarity to predict that since the least polar pigments move the most, pigment 1 is chlorophyll b, pigment 2 is chlorophyll a, pigment 3 is an anthocyanin, pigment 4 is a xanthophyll, and since most polar pigments move the least, pigment 5 is
Another aspect of the tundra includes the vegetation that is found there and the adaptations that have been made. The tundra is known for its’ cold temperatures, but also its’ limited plant species. The growth of the vegetation is primarily low to the ground and the biomass of plants is concentrated in the roots. Here the plants reproduce more likely by division and building than by flower pollination. Some of the growth forms that you will find in the tundra include tussocks, mats or cushion plants, rosettes, and dwarf shrubs....