Transcript Desert - jessicasterling

The Desert
By: Wooseok Park
Topic : desert
Genre : fiction
Hot and dry desert
A Hot and Dry Desert is, as
you can tell from the name,
hot and dry. Most Hot and Dry
Deserts don't have very many
plants. They do have some
low down plants though. The
only animals they have that
can survive have the ability to
burrow under ground. This is
because they would not be
able to live in the hot sun and
heat. They only come out in
the night when it is a little
cooler.
Cold Desert
A cold desert is a desert that
has snow in the winter
instead of just dropping a few
degrees in temperature like
they would in a Hot and Dry
Desert. It never gets warm
enough for plants to grow.
Just maybe a few grasses and
mosses. The animals in Cold
Deserts also have to burrow
but in this case to keep warm,
not cool. That is why you
might find some of the same
animals here as you would in
the Hot and Dry Deserts.
Grassland
Grassland biomes are large, rolling
terrains of grasses, flowers and herbs.
Latitude, soil and local climates for the
most part determine what kinds of
plants grow in a particular grassland. A
grassland is a region where the
average annual precipitation is great
enough to support grasses, and in
some areas a few trees. The
precipitation is so erratic that drought
and fire prevent large forests from
growing. Grasses can survive fires
because they grow from the bottom
instead of the top. Their stems can
grow again after being burned off. The
soil of most grasslands is also too thin
and dry for trees to survive.
Tundra
tundra is the coldest of all the
biomes. Tundra comes from
the Finnish word tunturi,
meaning treeless plain. It is
noted for its frost-molded
landscapes, extremely low
temperatures, little
precipitation, poor nutrients,
and short growing seasons.
Dead organic material
functions as a nutrient pool.
The two major nutrients are
nitrogen and phosphorus.
Nitrogen is created by
biological fixation, and
phosphorus is created by
precipitation.
Taiga
The taiga is the biome of
the needle leaf forest.
Living in the taiga is cold
and lonely. Coldness and
food shortages make
things very difficult,
mostly in the winter.
Some of the animals in
the taiga hibernate in
the winter, some fly
south if they can, while
some just cooperate
with the environment,
which is very difficult.
Deciduous forests
Deciduous forests can be found
in the eastern half of North
America, and the middle of
Europe. There are many
deciduous forests in Asia. Some
of the major areas that they are
in are southwest Russia, Japan,
and eastern China. South
America has two big areas of
deciduous forests in southern
Chile and Middle East coast of
Paraguay. There are deciduous
forests located in New Zealand,
and southeastern Australia also.
Glossary
1. Hot Desert - any area in which few forms of
life can exist because of lack of water,
permanent frost, or absence of soil.
2. Cold Desert - are those arid areas where the
only precipitation is in the form of snow and
the ground is covered in ice year round. The
largest cold deserts in the world are the polar
areas.
Glossary
3. Grassland - an area, as a prairie, in which the
natural vegetation consists largely of
perennial grass, characteristic of subhumid
and semiarid climates.
4. Tundra - one of the vast, nearly level, treeless
plains of the arctic regions of Europe, Asia,
and North America.
Glossary
5. Taiga - the coniferous evergreen forests of
subarctic lands, covering vast areas of
northern North America and Eurasia.
6. Deciduous forests - one of the vast, nearly
level, treeless plains of the arctic regions of
Europe, Asia, and North America.