- What is taiga?
- Taiga characteristics
- Taiga climate
- Taiga flora
- Taiga fauna
- Examples of taiga
- Taiga and tundra
We explain what the taiga is, also called "boreal forest", its characteristics, climate, flora, fauna and various examples.
What is taiga?
The taiga or boreal forest is one of the biomes in which the largest forest mass in the world resides. planet, composed almost entirely of coniferous forests. Its name comes from the Russian тайҕа, which means “land of small sticks”.
The taigas are located in the regions cold northern parts of the northern hemisphere, in the immediate vicinity of the Arctic Circle, in northern Russia (including Siberia), Europe, Canada and Alaska (USA), constituting a biome intermediate between steppe and the tundra. In the southern hemisphere there are no taigas, but its equivalent would be the Magellan subpolar forest.
It is a very important biome for the oxygenation and fixation of the planet's carbon (that is, its cooling), since the enormous extensions of forests in the taiga absorb large amounts of CO2, one of the main gases of greenhouse effect.
Taiga characteristics
The origin of this biome dates back to the last portion of the Pleistocene (23,000 to 16,500 years ago), at the end of the last Ice Age. In a much colder world, their species Vegetables were widely distributed in the world, but they were diminishing until the margin that they occupy today, as the glaciers began their retreat 18,000 years ago.
The taiga is one of the lungs of the planet, along with the tropical rainforests. But unlike these, it does not have a great biodiversity vegetable and animal, but it is an example of life adapted to a cold, dry and hostile climate, a prelude to the frozen desert of the polar regions. However, it is an important source of wood for industrial use.
Taiga climate
The taiga climate presents a temperature mean of 19 ° C in summer, and a minimum of -30 ° C in winter. That is, it is an icy climate in which permafrost predominates. Precipitation averages 450mm per year.
For these reasons, the species that live in these regions are adapted to cold and drought. For example, the life of plants it has a window of optimal conditions of just four months.
Taiga flora
The dominant vegetation in the taiga are conifers, sometimes of the same type, forming long extensions of Forest. Its needle-shaped leaves cope well with freezing temperatures, which lose little Water. In addition, being evergreen (they do not lose their leaves in autumn), they can make photosynthesis continuously and immediately as soon as Sun appear.
Its heights are around 40 meters, with a pyramidal crown. Due to its bushy branches, there is little impact from the sunlight in the undergrowth and little life around it, other than ferns, lichens and mosses. In general, the taiga is a biome with little plant biodiversity.
However, in the southern regions, where the climate becomes more benign, it is usual for deciduous trees of different nature to appear (poplars, birches, willows, etc.) forming mixed forests.
Taiga fauna
Similar to flora, fauna of the taiga is little varied and not very abundant. It is composed almost entirely of species adapted to the cold climate, with abundant fur, such as foxes, elk, mink, lynx, weasel and the maximum predators of the ecoregion, the bears.
Small rodents abound, such as mice, and rabbits or hares, as well as several species of birds. During the summer the weather improves a lot and then the burrowing worms and insects appear.
Examples of taiga
The main taigas on the planet are:
- Slave Lake-Muskwa forests in Canada.
- Canadian Uruguayan boreal forests, in Canada.
- Taiga of the Ural Mountains, Russia.
- Taiga of eastern Siberia, in Russia.
- Taiga and grasslands of Kamchatka, Russia.
Taiga and tundra
The taiga usually precedes the tundra geographically, which is how the biogreographic regions near the poles are known. There the vegetation decreases in size due to the arid conditions of the I usually (usually permafrost) and very little rainfall.
The tundra is a form of plain treeless, moss and lichen covered soils with abundant peat bogs. They are frequent in the extreme south of Chile and Argentina, near the Antarctic circle, as well as the islands of South Georgia, Auckland and Kerguelen, and in the few areas of Antarctica that are not covered by ice.
In the northern hemisphere they can also be found, on the northern coastlines of Russia, Canada, Alaska and the European Arctic coast, as well as southern Greenland.
There are also three types of tundra, depending on its geographical location:
- Alpine. Typical of Mountain regions.
- Arctic Typical of the Arctic region, more abundant in water and therefore in plant life.
- Antarctica. Typical of Antarctica, much drier and with much less biodiversity still.