The forest biome

Wisconsin forest

A Wisconsin forest.

About 420 million years ago, during the Silurian Period, ancient plants and arthropods began to occupy the land. Over the millions of years that followed, these land colonizers developed and adapted to their new habitat. The first forests were dominated by giant horsetails, club mosses, and ferns that stood up to 40 feet tall.

Life on Earth continued to evolve, and in the late Paleozoic, gymnosperms appeared. By the Triassic Period (245-208 mya), gymnosperms dominated the Earth's forests. In the Cretaceous Period (144-65m mya), the first flowering plants (angiosperms) appeared. They evolved together with insects, birds, and mammals and radiated rapidly, dominating the landscape by the end of the Period. The landscape changed again during the Pleistocene Ice Ages — the surface of the planet that had been dominated by tropical forests for millions of years changed, and temperate forests spread in the Northern Hemisphere.

Today, forests occupy approximately one-third of Earth's land area, account for over two-thirds of the leaf area of land plants, and contain about 70% of carbon present in living things. They have been held in reverence in folklore and worshipped in ancient religions. However, forests are becoming major casualties of civilization as human populations have increased over the past several thousand years, bringing deforestation, pollution, and industrial usage problems to this important biome.

Present-day forest biomes, biological communities that are dominated by trees and other woody vegetation (Spurr and Barnes 1980), can be classified according to numerous characteristics, with seasonality being the most widely used. Distinct forest types also occur within each of these broad groups.

There are three major types of forests, classed according to latitude:

Tropical forest

Tropical forest photos

Left: Ranomafana National Park, Madagascar; right: Hawaiian forest.

Tropical forests are characterized by the greatest diversity of species. They occur near the equator, within the area bounded by latitudes 23.5 degrees N and 23.5 degrees S. One of the major characteristics of tropical forests is their distinct seasonality: winter is absent, and only two seasons are present (rainy and dry). The length of daylight is 12 hours and varies little.

Further subdivisions of this group are determined by seasonal distribution of rainfall:

More than one half of tropical forests have already been destroyed.

Temperate forest

Temperate forests occur in eastern North America, northeastern Asia, and western and central Europe. Well-defined seasons with a distinct winter characterize this forest biome. Moderate climate and a growing season of 140-200 days during 4-6 frost-free months distinguish temperate forests.

Temperate forest photos

From left: Wisconsin woods; a forest along California's north coast; the forested hills of the Adirondacks, New York.

Further subdivisions of this group are determined by seasonal distribution of rainfall:

Only scattered remnants of original temperate forests remain.

Boreal forest (taiga)

Boreal forest photos

From left: taiga in Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada; forest west of Stockholm, Sweden.

Boreal forests, or taiga, represent the largest terrestial biome. Occuring between 50 and 60 degrees north latitudes, boreal forests can be found in the broad belt of Eurasia and North America: two-thirds in Siberia with the rest in Scandinavia, Alaska, and Canada. Seasons are divided into short, moist, and moderately warm summers and long, cold, and dry winters. The length of the growing season in boreal forests is 130 days.

Current extensive logging in boreal forests may soon cause their disappearance.

Freshwater
Freshwater
Marine
Marine
Desert
Desert
Forests
Forest
Grassland
Grassland
Tundra
Tundra

Top photo by Sherry Ballard © 2004 California Academy of Sciences. Tropical forest photos, from left: Albert P. Bekker © 2000 California Academy of Sciences; Lloyd Gomez © 2004 California Academy of Sciences; Gerald and Buff Corsi © 2000 California Academy of Sciences; Carl Austin Rietz © 2004 California Academy of Sciences. Temperate forest photos, from left: Sherry Ballard © 2004 California Academy of Sciences; Mona Bourell © 1999 California Academy of Sciences; David K. Smith, UCMP. Boreal forest photos, from left: Reuel R. Sutton © 2006 California Academy of Sciences; David K. Smith, UCMP.

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The original biomes pages were created in fall 1996 by the Biomes Group, Biology 1B class, section 115, at UC Berkeley; all were reformatted, with many new photos added, in March, 2007. Coral reef photo by Marguerite Gregory © 2004 California Academy of Sciences. The pages were re-designed in 2019 as part of a general UCMP website overhaul. Unless noted, content on these pages have not been updated.

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