What Animals Are Found In The Tundra

TUNDRA

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

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

ARCTIC TUNDRA

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

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

The tundra is known for cold conditions, with an boilerplate winter temperature of -thirty degrees F (-34 degrees C), and an average summer temperature ranging from 37 degrees to 54 degrees F (3 degrees to 12 degrees C). The growing season lasts from 50 to 60 days. The biome is as well characterized by desertlike conditions, with an average of half-dozen to 10 inches (xv to 25 cm) of yearly atmospheric precipitation, including snowfall melt. Winds often achieve speeds of 30 to 60 miles (48 to 97 km) an hour.

Another hallmark of the tundra is permafrost, a layer of permanently frozen subsoil and partially decayed organic matter. Just the superlative 9 or ten inches of soil thaw, leading to the germination of bogs and ponds each jump.

Ice wedges in the permafrost can crack and cause the formation of polygonal ground. This film also illustrates the germination of ponds every bit the snow melts each jump. Photo courtesy of U.Due south. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Tundra and taiga permafrost stores about ane-tertiary of the world'south soil-jump 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 temper 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 increment the rate and effects of climate change.

Approximately 1,700 species of vascular plants are institute beyond 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, have shallow root systems, and are capable of carrying out photosynthesis at low temperatures and with low light intensities.

Animals found in the Chill tundra include herbivorous mammals (lemmings, voles, caribou, chill hares, and squirrels), cannibal mammals (chill 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 because of the extremely cold temperatures. While many of the mammals have adaptations that enable them to survive the long cold winters and to breed and raise young quickly during the brusque summers, near birds and some mammals migrate south during the winter. Migration means that Arctic populations are in continual flux.

A generalized nutrient web for the Chill tundra begins with the diverse found species (producers). Herbivores (primary consumers) such equally pikas, musk oxen, caribou, lemmings, and arctic hares brand up the next rung. Omnivores and carnivores (secondary consumers) such equally arctic foxes, brown bears, arctic wolves, and snowy owls top the web. Bacteria and fungi play the important function of breaking down organic matter and returning nutrients to the soil for re-employ. Of course, the exact species involved in this web vary depending on the geographic location.

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

The interconnected nature of a food web means that every bit numbers of 1 species increase (or decrease), other populations modify in response. An oft-discussed tundra example is the lemming population. Lemmings are small rodents that feed on plants. Populations of lemmings fluctuate radically (from large populations to nigh extinction) in regular intervals. While scientists believed that populations of lemming predators (foxes, owls, skuas, and stoats) also fluctuated in response to these changes, in that location is now evidence that suggests that the predators themselves drive the changes in lemming populations.

Climate alter is affecting tundra ecosystems in many ways. Thawing permafrost not only releases carbon dioxide but besides leads to coastal erosion– an increasing problem in Alaska where villages are at risk. Warming also means that seasons are arriving earlier – a shift non simply in temperatures but also in the emergence and flowering of plants. Biologists suspect that a mismatch betwixt plant availability and calving is increasing bloodshed rates of caribou calves. Finally, species distributions may change 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 plant on the Antarctic Peninsula and several Antarctic and subantarctic islands. These areas have rocky soil that supports minimal plant life: two flowering plant species, mosses, algae, and lichens. Antarctic tundra does not support mammals, but marine mammals and birds inhabit areas almost the declension. All species in Antarctica and the Antarctic Islands (s of threescore degrees S latitude) are protected by the Antarctic Treaty.

LINKS

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

Biomes and Ecosystems
General information about biomes and ecosystems, with links to pages about tundra, taiga, temperate forest, tropical rainforest, desert, grassland, and ocean biomes. This site may also be used with upper-simple students.

Geography4Kids: Biosphere
Includes pages on ecology, ecosystems, food chains, populations, and land biomes. Advisable for use with upper-uncomplicated students.

NATIONAL Science EDUCATION STANDARDS: Science CONTENT STANDARDS

The unabridged National Science Education Standards document can be read online or downloaded for free from the National Academies Press web site. The following excerpt was taken from Chapter 6.

Teaching well-nigh biomes (including the tundra) can meet a broad variety of central concepts and principles, including:

K-4 Life Science

The Characteristics of Organisms

• Organisms take basic needs. For case, animals need air, h2o, and food; plants require air, water, nutrients, and lite. Organisms can survive only in environments in which their needs can be met. The world has many unlike environments, and distinct environments support the life of dissimilar types of organisms.

Organisms and their Environments

• All animals depend on plants. Some animals eat plants for food. Other animals consume animals that eat the plants.
• An organism'due south patterns of behavior are related to the nature of that organism's environs, including the kinds and numbers of other organisms nowadays, the availability of food and resources, and the concrete characteristics of the environment. 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 environs 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 affect an individual'south and a population'southward power to survive and their quality of life.
• Changes in environments tin can be natural or influenced by humans. Some changes are good, some are bad, and some are neither good nor bad. Pollution is a change in the environment that tin influence the health, survival, or activities of organisms, including humans.
• Some ecology changes occur slowly, and others occur rapidly. Students should empathise the dissimilar consequences of changing environments in small increments over long periods equally compared with changing environments in big increments over short periods.

5-8 Life Science

Populations and Ecosystems

• A population consists of all individuals of a species that occur together at a given place and fourth dimension. All populations living together and the physical factors with which they collaborate compose an ecosystem.
• Populations of organisms can be categorized by the part they serve in an ecosystem. Plants and some microorganisms are producers – they make their own food. All animals, including humans, are consumers, which obtain food by eating other organisms. Decomposers, primarily bacteria and fungi, are consumers that use waste materials and dead organisms for food. Nutrient webs identify the relationships among producers, consumers, and decomposers in an ecosystem.
• For ecosystems, the major source of energy is sunlight. Energy inbound ecosystems as sunlight is transferred by producers into chemic free energy through photosynthesis. That energy then passes from organism to organism in food webs.
• The number of organisms an ecosystem tin back up depends on the resources available and abiotic factors, such as quantity of calorie-free and water, range of temperatures, and soil limerick. Given adequate biotic and abiotic resources and no illness or predators, populations (including humans) increase at rapid rates. Lack of resource and other factors, such as predation and climate, limit the growth of populations in specific niches in the ecosystem.

v-8 Science in Personal and Social Perspectives

Populations, Resources, and Environments

• When an area becomes overpopulated, the environment will become degraded due to the increased use of resources.
• Causes of ecology 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 man and wildlife habitats, damage property, and impairment or kill humans. Natural hazards include earthquakes, landslides, wildfires, volcanic eruptions, floods, storms, and even possible impacts of asteroids.
• Human activities likewise can induce hazards through resource acquisition, urban growth, land-apply decisions, and waste disposal. Such activities tin advance many natural changes.

This article was written by Jessica Fries-Gaither. For more than information, see the Contributors folio. E-mail Kimberly Lightle, Principal Investigator, with any questions almost the content of this site.

Copyright March 2009 – The Ohio Country University. This material is based upon work supported past the National Scientific discipline Foundation under Grant No. 0733024. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and practise not necessarily reflect the views of the National Scientific discipline Foundation. This work is licensed under an Attribution-ShareAlike iii.0 Unported Creative Commons license .

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

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