What Kind Of Animals Live In The Tundra Biome

TUNDRA

The tundra is a biome characterized by an extremely cold climate, piffling atmospheric precipitation, poor nutrients, and a short growing season. Other characteristics include low biodiversity, simple plants, limited drainage, and large variations in populations.

In that location are two types of tundra: arctic and alpine. Arctic tundra is located in the Northern Hemisphere; alpine tundra is located at high elevations on mountains throughout the world. Tundra is also plant to a express extent in Antarctica – specifically, the Antarctic Peninsula.

ARCTIC TUNDRA

Arctic tundra is institute along the northern coasts of North America, Asia, and Europe, and in parts of Greenland. It extends southward to the edge of the taiga (a biome characterized by coniferous forests). The division between the forested taiga and the treeless tundra is known as the timberline or tree line.

Location of arctic tundra across the Northern Hemisphere. Image courtesy of Wikimedia.

The tundra is known for cold conditions, with an average wintertime temperature of -30 degrees F (-34 degrees C), and an boilerplate summer temperature ranging from 37 degrees to 54 degrees F (3 degrees to 12 degrees C). The growing flavor lasts from 50 to sixty days. The biome is also characterized by desertlike conditions, with an average of half dozen to x inches (xv to 25 cm) of yearly precipitation, including snowfall melt. Winds often achieve speeds of thirty to 60 miles (48 to 97 km) an 60 minutes.

Another hallmark of the tundra is permafrost, a layer of permanently frozen subsoil and partially decayed organic matter. Only the peak nine or ten inches of soil thaw, leading to the formation of bogs and ponds each spring.

Ice wedges in the permafrost can crack and cause the formation of polygonal ground. This picture also illustrates the formation of ponds every bit the snow melts each leap. Photo courtesy of U.Due south. Fish and Wild animals Service.

Tundra and taiga permafrost stores well-nigh ane-tertiary of the world's soil-bound carbon. Warming Arctic temperatures due to climate change are causing the permafrost to thaw, releasing the carbon in the form of carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas). Additional carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will intensify warming, leading to increased thawing and the release of even more than carbon dioxide. This positive feedback loop thus has the potential to significantly increase the charge per unit and effects of climate change.

Approximately 1,700 species of vascular plants are found across the Arctic tundra, including flowering plants, depression shrubs, sedges, grasses, and liverworts. Lichens, mosses, and algae are also common. In general, tundra plants are low growing, accept shallow root systems, and are capable of carrying out photosynthesis at low temperatures and with low calorie-free intensities.

Animals found in the Chill tundra include herbivorous mammals (lemmings, voles, caribou, arctic hares, and squirrels), carnivorous mammals (arctic foxes, wolves, and polar bears), fish (cod, flatfish, salmon, and trout), insects (mosquitoes, flies, moths, grasshoppers, and blackflies), and birds (ravens, snow buntings, falcons, loons, sandpipers, terns, and gulls). Reptiles and amphibians are absent-minded because of the extremely common cold temperatures. While many of the mammals accept adaptations that enable them to survive the long cold winters and to breed and raise young apace during the curt summers, well-nigh birds and some mammals migrate southward during the winter. Migration means that Arctic populations are in continual flux.

A generalized food web for the Arctic tundra begins with the various plant species (producers). Herbivores (primary consumers) such as pikas, musk oxen, caribou, lemmings, and arctic hares make up the next rung. Omnivores and carnivores (secondary consumers) such as chill foxes, brown bears, arctic wolves, and snowy owls top the spider web. Leaner and fungi play the important role of breaking downwards organic thing and returning nutrients to the soil for re-use. Of course, the verbal species involved in this web vary depending on the geographic location.

A generalized tundra food spider web. Verbal relationships and species depend on geographic location.

The interconnected nature of a food spider web means that equally numbers of one species increase (or subtract), other populations alter in response. An often-discussed tundra example is the lemming population. Lemmings are small rodents that feed on plants. Populations of lemmings fluctuate radically (from large populations to virtually extinction) in regular intervals. While scientists believed that populations of lemming predators (foxes, owls, skuas, and stoats) as well fluctuated in response to these changes, there is now evidence that suggests that the predators themselves drive the changes in lemming populations.

Climatic change is affecting tundra ecosystems in many ways. Thawing permafrost not only releases carbon dioxide merely as well leads to coastal erosion– an increasing problem in Alaska where villages are at risk. Warming as well means that seasons are arriving earlier – a shift not simply in temperatures but likewise in the emergence and flowering of plants. Biologists suspect that a mismatch between plant availability and calving is increasing mortality rates of caribou calves. Finally, species distributions may alter every bit birds and other animals shift their range or migration patterns in response to changing temperatures.

ANTARCTIC TUNDRA

Much less extensive than Arctic tundra, Antarctic tundra is found on the Antarctic Peninsula and several Antarctic and subantarctic islands. These areas accept rocky soil that supports minimal plant life: two flowering plant species, mosses, algae, and lichens. Antarctic tundra does not support mammals, simply marine mammals and birds inhabit areas near the declension. All species in Antarctica and the Antarctic Islands (south of 60 degrees Due south latitude) are protected past the Antarctic Treaty.

LINKS

The World'due south Biomes
An overview of biomes and information on six major types: freshwater, marine, desert, woods, grassland, and tundra.

Biomes and Ecosystems
General data nearly biomes and ecosystems, with links to pages about tundra, taiga, temperate forest, tropical rainforest, desert, grassland, and bounding main biomes. This site may also be used with upper-unproblematic students.

Geography4Kids: Biosphere
Includes pages on ecology, ecosystems, food chains, populations, and land biomes. Appropriate for apply with upper-simple students.

NATIONAL SCIENCE EDUCATION STANDARDS: Science CONTENT STANDARDS

The entire National Science Instruction Standards document can be read online or downloaded for costless from the National Academies Press web site. The following excerpt was taken from Chapter half-dozen.

Teaching virtually biomes (including the tundra) tin come across a broad variety of cardinal concepts and principles, including:

Thou-4 Life Science

The Characteristics of Organisms

Organisms have basic needs. For example, animals need air, h2o, and food; plants require air, h2o, nutrients, and light. Organisms tin can survive only in environments in which their needs can exist met. The earth has many different environments, and distinct environments support the life of different types of organisms.

Organisms and their Environments

All animals depend on plants. Some animals eat plants for food. Other animals eat animals that consume the plants.
An organism's patterns of behavior are related to the nature of that organism's environment, including the kinds and numbers of other organisms nowadays, the availability of food and resources, and the physical characteristics of the surroundings. When the surround changes, some plants and animals survive and reproduce, and others die or move to new locations.
All organisms crusade changes in the environment in which they live. Some of these changes are detrimental to the organism or other organisms, whereas others are beneficial.
Humans depend on their natural and constructed environments. Humans change environments in ways that can be either beneficial or detrimental for themselves and other organisms.

K-4 Scientific discipline in Personal and Social Perspectives

Changes in Environments

Environments are the space, atmospheric condition, and factors that bear on an individual'southward and a population'due south ability to survive and their quality of life.
Changes in environments can be natural or influenced by humans. Some changes are proficient, some are bad, and some are neither good nor bad. Pollution is a alter in the surroundings that can influence the wellness, survival, or activities of organisms, including humans.
Some environmental changes occur slowly, and others occur rapidly. Students should understand the different consequences of irresolute environments in small increments over long periods equally compared with irresolute environments in big increments over curt periods.

5-viii Life Scientific discipline

Populations and Ecosystems

A population consists of all individuals of a species that occur together at a given identify and time. All populations living together and the physical factors with which they collaborate etch an ecosystem.
Populations of organisms can exist categorized by the function they serve in an ecosystem. Plants and some microorganisms are producers – they make their ain food. All animals, including humans, are consumers, which obtain food past eating other organisms. Decomposers, primarily leaner and fungi, are consumers that employ waste product materials and dead organisms for nutrient. Food webs identify the relationships among producers, consumers, and decomposers in an ecosystem.
For ecosystems, the major source of energy is sunlight. Free energy entering ecosystems as sunlight is transferred by producers into chemical energy through photosynthesis. That energy and so passes from organism to organism in food webs.
The number of organisms an ecosystem can support depends on the resources available and abiotic factors, such as quantity of light and h2o, range of temperatures, and soil composition. Given adequate biotic and abiotic resources and no disease or predators, populations (including humans) increase at rapid rates. Lack of resource and other factors, such every bit predation and climate, limit the growth of populations in specific niches in the ecosystem.

v-8 Science in Personal and Social Perspectives

Populations, Resource, and Environments

When an area becomes overpopulated, the environment will become degraded due to the increased employ of resources.
Causes of environmental degradation and resource depletion vary from region to region and from country to country.

Natural Hazards

Internal and external processes of the earth system cause natural hazards, events that alter or destroy human and wildlife habitats, damage property, and impairment or kill humans. Natural hazards include earthquakes, landslides, wildfires, volcanic eruptions, floods, storms, and fifty-fifty possible impacts of asteroids.
Man activities too can induce hazards through resource acquisition, urban growth, land-employ decisions, and waste disposal. Such activities can advance many natural changes.

This article was written by Jessica Chips-Gaither. For more information, see the Contributors page. Email Kimberly Lightle, Principal Investigator, with any questions almost the content of this site.

Copyright March 2009 – The Ohio Land University. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation nether Grant No. 0733024. Whatever opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the writer(s) and do non necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. This piece of work is licensed under an Attribution-ShareAlike three.0 Unported Artistic Eatables license .

Source: https://beyondpenguins.ehe.osu.edu/issue/tundra-life-in-the-polar-extremes/life-in-the-tundra

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