What is a Biome?

A biome is a complex, living comunity that has unique characteristics including animals, plants, and climax conditions of the region. The organisms in a biome are climax species.

If you could chose, what biome would you live in, and why?

Our Biome- Deserts

Our biome is the desert. It is very unique because the temperature can be either hot or cold. Deserts are classified not for their temperature, but for the average amount of rain fall. For a area of land to be considered a desert, it must recieve less than 10 inches of rain each year. Deserts can be extremely hot during the day but can reach below freezing at night. Even though deserts have very little water, many organisms thrive there. There are plants that are the size of pebbles and plants that are three times the height of a giraffe. Many people think anaimals can't survive in the dessert but many animals have special adaptations to help them survive in the desert.

Sources: Deserts And Semideserts Book


What are some animals that have adaptions and why do you their adaptations help them?

Types of Desets

There are four main types of deserts. These types of deserts are found in different parts of the world. Hot deserts are found near the tropic of Capricorn and the Tropic of Cancer. Semi deserts are usually found near other desserts and have more rain then the other three types of desert. Costal deserts have cold water offshore these deserts are generaly found on the west coasts of continents. Cold deserts are found far away from the equator, they are also found at very high altitudes. Although most people think of deserts having sand dunes deserts can have many types of terain, mountains gravel plains and dry salt lakes

What type of deserts to you think are near you

Source: Deserts by Greg Reid

What would you see in a desert

If you went to a desert you could see many things. What you would see would depend on what type of desert you were looking at. If you were looking at a cold desert you would see a ice covering the ground. You wouldn't see may plants close together most plants would have leaves like pine trees. Mainly you would see small herbivores with some larger carnivores in the winter you might see a deer. In a hot desert you would see the ground was covered by either gravel, dirt or sand. There would be mostly short shrubs and grasses with a few trees and cacti. A coastal desert would look quite like the hot desert, and a semi-desert would look like a hot desert with more plant and animal life, since there is more rain.

The Atacama desert is in Chile it only gets 1.5 cm. of rain per year, what type of desert do you think it is.

In average, how much rain do you think deserts in general get per year?

Sources:http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/exhibits/biomes/deserts.php#coast

Antarctica a Cold Desert

Several parts of Antartica are cold deserts. Most of Antarctica is covered with high elevations of ice. However, no anaimls live at the top, because they are too far away from the food source, which is the ocean. The ice holds about seventy five percent of the world's fresh water supply. Even though it is covered in ice, it is one of the driest plaves on earth. Antarctica almost doubles in size evry year when the sea ice forms. there is one place called the Dry Valley, where no ice is found. The high mountains prevent the glaciers from coming into the valley, and strong winds keep most of the snow fall out of the valley. There isn't much life there, but there are cyano bacteria there. They can stay dormant for hundreds of years. When there is enough water, they revive themselves and use photosynthesis for food. Also, the only river in the Dry Valley is the Onyx River. However, it only flows during the summer. When it does flow, it has beautiful, clean water. Antarctica even has active volcanoes. One of these is Mount Erebus.

Do you think that you could survive in the Dry Valley in the summer?

Sources: Arctic Tundra and Polar Deserts,

Popcorn Flowers

The popcorn flower are small and white with 5 petals. They bloom from February through June. It can be as small as 2 inches and can go up to 10 inches tall. Besides in deserts, they can be found in Arizona and California. They are held in a tight coil at the top of the plant. The flowers open starting from the bottom of the plant moving to the top. This causes the stem to uncoil.

How do you think plants survive in the desert?






Sources:http://www.desertusa.com/june97/du_popcorn.html, http://www.delange.org/PopcornFlower/PopcornFlower.htm

Cactus

One plant that lives in our desert is a cactus. In general, a cactus is round shaped. Instead of leaves, cacti have spines. They help shade the cactus from the sun, they cut down air currnets close to the stem, and they protect them from animals that could attempt to eat them. There are over 1600 different species of cacti in the world. They can be really small and about 0.5 inches across and can grow as tall as 60 feet. When it rains, a large cactus can take in about 210 gallons of water at one time when it rains. The Saguaros Cactus is the tallest cacti in the United States and are found only in the Sonoran Desert. Many birds find shelter in Sagauaros in the desert instead of in trees. A saguaro begins to grow its arms when it is about 50 to 100 years old. The saguaros bloom for the first time when they are about 8 feet tall.

What months do you think the Sanguaros bloom?

Sources: "Life in a Desert", "Deserts and Semideserts"

Polar Animals

Two animals that live in Antarctica are the penguins and orcas which are also called killer whales. Penguins visit nearby islands to rest, molt, and breed. Penguins are carnivores, and the whales are too. Penguins eat many different kinds of fish, plankton, krill, and squid. The whales are the top predators, so they eat many animals including seals, and even baleen whales. In Antarctica, there are more penguins than any other kind of bird. there are seventeen different species of penguins, and of them, eleven are found in Antarctica. They are flightless, but they can "fly" in the water. They propel them selves with their wings, and steer with their tails and webbed feet. Penguins have many differnt adaptations for keeping them warm. Their feathers overlap to keep in air to help insulate their bodies. They also have a thick layer of fat under their skin to also help insulate their bodies from the cold. There is also an oil gland by their tails to help keep their feathers water proof. Orcas are the top predators. they have up to fourty four teeth and a large dorsal fin. They have a pattern of black and white. they are one of the fastest mammals in the ocean even though they can reach up to thirty three feet in length.

Would you rather be a orca or a penguin, and why?

source: Antarctica Ecosystems

http://marinebio.org/upload/hickerphoto/orcas.jpg,
http://www.polarcruises.com/antarctica/articles/photos/articles/art_Penguins_emperor_and_chick.jpg

Why Are there Deserts?

There are different kinds of deserts. Both hot and cold deserts. A lot of the hot deserts are near the equator. this means that it is very hot. If it is too hot, the water that evaporates can't condense into precitipation to fall onto the earth. For the cold deserts, they are near the poles. This way, it precipitates a little, but the water freezes, and it doesn't evaporate into the atmosphere. When you see movies about Antarctica, all of the snow that is blowing around is just fallen snow that doesn't evaportate, but is blown around by the strong winds.

Would you rather live in a hot or cold desert, and why?