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APESCH5
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Biomes | A broad, regional type of ecosystem characterized by distinctive climate and soil conditions and a distinctive kind of biological community adapted to those conditions |
| Vertical zonation | Terrestrial vegetation zones determined by altitude |
| Cloud forests | high mountain forests where temperatures are uniformly cool and fog or mist keeps vegetation wet all the time |
| Tropical rainforests | forests in which rainfall is abundant and temperatures are warm to hot year-round |
| Tropical seasonal forests | drought-tolerant forests that look brown and dormant in the dry season but burst into vivid green during rainy months |
| grasslands | a biome dominated by grasses and associated herbaceous plants |
| savannas | open grasslands with sparse tree coverage |
| deserts | a type of biome characterized by low moisture levels and infrequent and upredictable precipitation. daily and seasonal temperatures fluctuate widely |
| chaparral | thick, dense, thorny evergreen scrub found in Mediterranean climates |
| deciduous | trees and shrubs that shed their leaves at the end of the growing season |
| coniferous | needle-bearing trees that produce seeds in cones; |
| temperate rainforest | the cool, dense, rainy forest of the northern Pacific coast; enshrouded in fog much of the time; dominated by large conifers |
| boreal forest | a broad band of mixed coniferous and deciduous trees that stretches acrossnorthern NOrth America (and also Europe and Asia); its northernmost edge, the taiga, intergrads with the arctic tundra |
| taiga | the northernmost edge of the boreal forest, including species-poor woodland and peat deposits; intergrading with the arctic tundra |
| tundra | treeless arctcor alpine biomecharacterized by cold, harsh winters, a short growing season, and potential for frost any month of the year; vegetation includes low-growing prennial plants, mosses, and lichens |
| phytoplankton | microscopic, free-floating, autotrophic organisms that function as producers in aquatic ecosystems |
| benthic | the bottom of a sea or lake |
| pelagic | zones in the vertical watercolumn of a water body |
| coral reefs | prominent oceanic features composed of hard, limy skeletons produced by coral animals; usually formed along edges of shallow, submerged ocean banks or along shelves in warm, shallow, tropical seas |
| coral bleaching | whitening of corals caused by expulsion of symbiotic algae- often reulting from high water temperatures, pollution, or disease |
| mangroves | trees from a number of genera that live in salt water |
| estuaries | a bay or drowned valley were a river empties into the sea |
| salt marshes | shallow wetlands along coastlines that are flooded regularly or occasionally with seawater |
| tide pools | depressions in a rocky shoreline that are flooded at high tide but cut off from the ocean at low tide |
| barrier islands | low, narrow, sandy islands that form offshore from a coastline |
| thermocline | in water, a distinctive temperature transition zone that separates an upper layer that is mixed by the wind (the epilmnion) and a colder, deep layer that is not mixed (the hypolimnion) |
| wetlands | shallow ecosystems in which the land surface is saturated or submerged at least part of the year |
| swamps | wetlands with trees |
| marshes | wetlands without trees |
| bogs | areas of saturated ground, and usually the ground is composed of deep layers of accumulated, undecayed vegetation known as peat |
| fens | similar to bogs except that they are mainly fed by groundwater, so that they have mineral-rich water and specially adapted plant species |
Created by:
AlanaR
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