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Taiga Biome
Taiga, also called boreal forests, is the largest land biome.These forests are found in a broad belt across Europe, Asia and North America : about two thirds are in Siberia, and the rest are in Scandinavia, Alaska and Canada.
In this biome, summers are short and mild and the winters are long, cold and dry.
Plants are mostly evergreen conifers with leaves like needles, such as pine, fir and spruce. Leaves like this minimise water loss and do not get weighed down with snow. The snow slides off the needles. The forest canopy lets in a restricted amount of sunlight, and this limits the understorey growth. The ground is covered with a thick layer of needles and dead twigs, matted together by fungus
Rainfall, or precipitation, mostly falls as snow, usually 40-100 cm each year. Soil is thin and lacking in nutrients.
Animals found in taiga include woodpeckers, hawks, moose, bear, weasel, lynx, fox, wolf, deer, hares, chipmunks, shrews, and bats. Mammals
living in the boreal forests have all adapted in various ways
to survive the long cold winters. Generally they have heavy fur
coats and many hibernate through the winter.
There is extensive logging in boreal forests which is threatening their survival.
Find out more about taiga http://www.blueplanetbiomes.org/taiga.htm
Read other kidcyber pages about biomes:
water .. rainforest .. tundra .. desert ..deciduous forests ..grassland
updated February 2007