Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Kelp forests provide important habitats for many fish species, sea otters and sea urchins. Directly and indirectly, marine coastal ecosystems provide vast arrays of ecosystem services for humans, such as cycling nutrients and elements, and purifying water by filtering pollutants. They sequester carbon as a cushion against climate change.
Boreal ecosystems are filled with a multitude of flora species from black and white spruce, to willows, wildflowers, and alders. [6] Caribou, although not there year round, come down and into these regions during the winter to forage for lichen. [7] A few fish species include salmonids, smelts, sticklebacks, lamprey and sculpins. [8]
Mangrove plants require a number of physiological adaptations to overcome the problems of low environmental oxygen levels, high salinity, and frequent tidal flooding.Each species has its own solutions to these problems; this may be the primary reason why, on some shorelines, mangrove tree species show distinct zonation.
For comparison, the tropical rainforest biome contains thousands of tree species, but this is not to say mangrove forests lack diversity. Though the trees themselves are few in species, the ecosystem that these trees create provides a home (habitat) for a great variety of other species, including as many as 174 species of marine megafauna .
Forest ecology shares characteristics and methodological approaches with other areas of terrestrial plant ecology, however, the presence of trees makes forest ecosystems and their study unique in numerous ways due to the potential for a wide variety of forest structures created by the uniquely large size and height of trees compared with other ...
The region is strongly influenced by the large mountain ranges stretching throughout most of the coast. Changes in elevation cause changes in plant/animal diversity, this can be exemplified through observing the alpine tundra's vegetation which consists of shrubs, herbs, mosses, and lichens; while lower elevations, the temperate coastal forest hold magnificently large trees such as western ...
Although there are rather few species of trees in the boreal forest, there is a considerable diversity of other kinds of plants. An accurate summary is difficult, since most compendia on plants are organized by political, rather than ecological boundaries; one exception addresses the flora of the Hudson Bay Lowland , [ 28 ] but much of this ...
In these forests, winter is a time of dormancy for plants, [8] when broadleaf deciduous trees conserve energy and prevent water loss, and many animal species hibernate or migrate. [1] Preceding winter is fruit-bearing autumn, a time when leaves change color to various shades of red, yellow, and orange as chlorophyll breakdown gives rise to ...