TaigaBy: Georgie, Erica, Megan

Defining characteristics of Taiga

Taiga is the biome of the needle leaf forest and it’s also known as the boreal forest. The coldness and shortage of food makes thing difficult, mostly in the winter. Taiga doesn't’t have as many plants and animals as the tropical or deciduous forest biomes. In the taiga most of the animals hibernate, but the animals such as birds flies south.

Occurrence on Earth

Taiga is located near to the top of the world just below the tundra biome. It is between 50 degrees latitude north and Arctic circle.

Climate and Geographic features

It’s mostly cold crisp air in Taiga. Summer is warm and winter is really cold in Taiga. In the winter the average freezing time is 6 months each year. The winter temperatures range is -540c to -10c, winter has a lot of snow in Taiga. The summer temperature range gets as low as -70

c to 210c. Summer is warm and rainy. Four months have an average temp of 100c in Taiga. The main seasons in the taiga are winter and summer the other seasons such as autumn and spring are very short.

Organisms

A lot of coniferous trees grow in the Taiga, there is a lot of insects in the summer time, some of the plants in the taiga are:

Paper birch Black spruce White spruce

Jack pine

Organisms

There are not a lot of animals in Taiga because not many animals cant live in the cold climates of Taiga. These are some of the animals that do live in the taiga: Black bear Bobcat Chickadees Bald Eagle

Adaptations (physical and behavioral)

Many trees are evergreens in Taiga, so that plants can photosynthesize right away when temperatures rise.Many trees have needle like leaves which shape loses less water and sheds snow more easily the broad leaves.