35 articles
Alpine tundra
Alpine tundra: treeless vegetation above the mountain treeline, one of two tundra types alongside arctic tundra. Defined by a 5–7°C growing-season mean, 5–6 million km² globally, patchy permafrost, and high climate sensitivity.
Biome
Biome: a large geographic area classified by its plant and animal life, shaped by climate, soil, water, and light. Term coined by Clements in 1916; schemes range from 2 to dozens of biomes; climate change is shifting them.
Biotope
Biotope: an ecological term coined by Friedrich Dahl in 1908, originally the abiotic conditions of a biocenosis, now meaning habitat plus associated community, used in European marine classification and management.
Chaparral
Chaparral: California's Mediterranean-climate evergreen sclerophyll shrubland, about 10 million acres, dominated by chamise, manzanita, ceanothus; historical fire-return intervals 30-90 years; threatened by drought and short-interval fire type conversion.
Cloud forest
Cloud forest (tropical montane cloud forest, TMCF): mountain forest regularly immersed in fog, defined by cloud immersion rather than elevation. Covers ~215,000 km2, high endemism, gains water via fog drip, threatened by deforestation and cloud uplift.
Coastal environment
Coastal environment: the areas where land meets the sea, including tidal wetlands, estuaries, bays, mangrove swamps, and in-shore reefs; habitats under stress from pollution, habitat loss, and climate change, managed through integrated frameworks such as ICM and DPSIR.
Coniferous forest
Coniferous forest: forest of cone-bearing, needle-leaved, mostly evergreen trees; includes the boreal taiga at 50–60°N (about 30% of global forest) and temperate mountain conifer forests worldwide.
Deciduous forest
Deciduous forest: forests whose dominant trees shed all leaves seasonally, in temperate winters or tropical dry seasons; Northern Hemisphere temperate deciduous broadleaf biome, its phenology, understory light, and climate responses.
Extreme Environments
Extreme environments are habitats outside the tolerance range of unadapted organisms, from −12 °C to 129 °C and pH below 0 to 13, inhabited by extremophiles such as thermophiles, halophiles, and piezophiles.
Forest
Forest: land with trees, FAO-defined as over 0.5 ha with more than 10 percent canopy cover and trees able to reach 5 m. Covers 4.14 billion hectares, about 32 percent of land, and holds most terrestrial carbon.
Forest ecology
Forest ecology examines how wooded ecosystems function across temperate, boreal, and tropical forests, studying interacting species, disturbance and succession, nutrient cycling, and conservation, and underpinning sustainable forest management.
Grassland
A grassland is a terrestrial ecosystem where grasses, sedges, and forbs dominate with few or no trees, known regionally as prairie, steppe, pampas, or veld.
Heath
Heath (heathland): open shrubland on free-draining, infertile acidic soils dominated by ericoid dwarf shrubs like Calluna vulgaris; a human-made European cultural landscape maintained by grazing and burning, threatened by nitrogen deposition and succession to forest.
Jungle
Jungle: a colloquial term for dense tropical forest vegetation, from Sanskrit jangala (originally savanna). Not a scientific biome; rainforest is the formal term, distinguished by closed canopy and light penetration.
Meadow
Meadow: grassland left uncut through the growing season, then mown for hay and aftermath-grazed, unlike year-round pasture. Flower-rich habitat; over 97% of UK hay meadows lost since the 1930s; also mountain and urban meadow types.
Mixed forest
Mixed forest: a stand with two or more tree species, or both broadleaf and coniferous trees, neither predominating (CORINE 25–75% shares). Known for higher carbon storage, biodiversity, and soil health than monocultures, with context-dependent benefits.
Moorland
Moorland: open, treeless upland vegetation of heather, bogs and grasses on peaty soils, mostly above 200 m in Britain and Ireland, which holds more heather moorland than anywhere else; managed by grazing and burning, valued for peat carbon, and increasingly restored after wildfire.
Mountain forest
Mountain forest: forests at 2,500 m+ or on steep 300–2,500 m terrain (FAO definition), about 900 million hectares, 20% of world forest cover, on every continent except Antarctica; key protection forests against avalanches, landslides, and floods.
Natural forest
Natural forest: forest of indigenous trees regenerated naturally, not planted, per FAO/FRA definitions; ranges from primary (undisturbed) forest to used stands; distinct from plantations.
Prairie
A prairie is a North American grassland ecosystem of grasses and flowering forbs, formerly spanning from the Rocky Mountains east through Illinois and now largely converted to cropland.
Private forest
Private forest: forest owned by individuals, families, corporations, or private institutions rather than government. Covers FAO definitions, ownership shares (61% of US forest, 81% of Swedish productive forest), owner types, regulation, certification, and development pressures.
Rainforest
Rainforest: dense evergreen forest with high rainfall, tropical and temperate types, holding over half of Earth's species on 2–6% of land; four layers, Amazon largest, threatened by deforestation, fire, and climate change.
Rural environment
Rural environment (农村环境; GEMET: environment pertaining to the countryside). Countryside natural and human systems outside dense urban areas; no universal rural definition, US Census threshold 2,000 housing units/5,000 residents, ~40% of world land degraded.
Savanna
Savanna (savannah): tropical grassland with scattered trees forming a biome between forest and grassland, covering about a quarter of land, maintained by rainfall limits, fire, and herbivory, and dating to 10–6 million years ago.
Seasonal tropical forest
Seasonal tropical forest, also called tropical seasonal or moist deciduous forest, is lowland tropical forest with ≥1,600 mm annual rain and a 3+ month dry season, flanking rainforest north and south, with 80–150 tree species per hectare and wet-season-paced phenology.
Shrubland
Shrubland: non-forest vegetation dominated by shrubs with over 10% cover and no tall tree canopy, covering part of the ~40% of land in grasslands, shrublands, and savannas; shaped by drought, poor soils, and fire, with sagebrush and chaparral as major western US types.
Stygofauna
Stygofauna: animals, mainly invertebrates, living in groundwater (stygobites, stygophiles, stygoxenes). Largest terrestrial freshwater biome; over 7,800 known subterranean species; key roles in aquifer water quality, threatened by abstraction, pollution, and warming.
Temperate deciduous forest
Temperate deciduous forest: mid-latitude broadleaf biome with four seasons, 10°C mean temperature, 750–1,500 mm annual rain; oaks, maples, beeches in eastern North America, Europe, China, Japan; leaves shed in autumn.
Temperate forest
Temperate forest: mid-latitude forest biome (25–50°N/S) between the 10°C and 18°C isotherms, about 766 million ha or 25% of world forests, with deciduous, evergreen, and conifer types, mean productivity 14.2 Mg ha−1 yr−1, and the deepest human alteration of any forest biome.
Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests
Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests, or tropical rainforests and moist forests, are frost-free evergreen broadleaf biomes needing roughly 2000+ mm annual rain. They hold 247 Gt C, over half of Earth's species, and 1071 Mha remain amid record 2024 loss.