What Animals Live In The Arctic Tundra That Are Carnivores

TUNDRA

The tundra is a biome characterized past an extremely common cold climate, fiddling precipitation, poor nutrients, and a brusque growing season. Other characteristics include depression biodiversity, uncomplicated plants, express drainage, and large variations in populations.

There are two types of tundra: arctic and alpine. Chill tundra is located in the Northern Hemisphere; alpine tundra is located at high elevations on mountains throughout the world. Tundra is besides establish to a limited extent in Antarctica – specifically, the Antarctic Peninsula.

Arctic TUNDRA

Arctic tundra is constitute forth the northern coasts of Northward America, Asia, and Europe, and in parts of Greenland. It extends south to the border of the taiga (a biome characterized by coniferous forests). The division between the forested taiga and the treeless tundra is known every bit the timberline or tree line.

Location of arctic tundra beyond the Northern Hemisphere. Image courtesy of Wikimedia.

The tundra is known for cold atmospheric condition, with an average winter temperature of -30 degrees F (-34 degrees C), and an average summer temperature ranging from 37 degrees to 54 degrees F (3 degrees to 12 degrees C). The growing season lasts from fifty to sixty days. The biome is also characterized past desertlike weather condition, with an boilerplate of six to ten inches (15 to 25 cm) of yearly atmospheric precipitation, including snow melt. Winds often accomplish speeds of 30 to threescore miles (48 to 97 km) an hour.

Another hallmark of the tundra is permafrost, a layer of permanently frozen subsoil and partially decayed organic affair. Only the summit ix or ten inches of soil thaw, leading to the formation of bogs and ponds each spring.

Ice wedges in the permafrost can crack and cause the formation of polygonal ground. This moving picture likewise illustrates the germination of ponds as the snow melts each bound. Photo courtesy of U.Due south. Fish and Wild fauna Service.

Tundra and taiga permafrost stores about one-third of the world's soil-bound carbon. Warming Arctic temperatures due to climate change are causing the permafrost to thaw, releasing the carbon in the form of carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas). Additional carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will intensify warming, leading to increased thawing and the release of fifty-fifty more carbon dioxide. This positive feedback loop thus has the potential to significantly increase the rate and effects of climate modify.

Approximately i,700 species of vascular plants are found across the Arctic tundra, including flowering plants, low shrubs, sedges, grasses, and liverworts. Lichens, mosses, and algae are likewise common. In general, tundra plants are low growing, take shallow root systems, and are capable of conveying out photosynthesis at depression temperatures and with low low-cal intensities.

Animals found in the Arctic tundra include herbivorous mammals (lemmings, voles, caribou, arctic hares, and squirrels), carnivorous mammals (arctic foxes, wolves, and polar bears), fish (cod, flatfish, salmon, and trout), insects (mosquitoes, flies, moths, grasshoppers, and blackflies), and birds (ravens, snow buntings, falcons, loons, sandpipers, terns, and gulls). Reptiles and amphibians are absent considering of the extremely cold temperatures. While many of the mammals have adaptations that enable them to survive the long common cold winters and to breed and raise young quickly during the brusk summers, most birds and some mammals migrate southward during the wintertime. Migration means that Arctic populations are in continual flux.

A generalized food web for the Arctic tundra begins with the diverse plant species (producers). Herbivores (master consumers) such as pikas, musk oxen, caribou, lemmings, and arctic hares brand up the next rung. Omnivores and carnivores (secondary consumers) such every bit arctic foxes, brown bears, chill wolves, and snowy owls top the web. Bacteria and fungi play the important role of breaking down organic matter and returning nutrients to the soil for re-use. Of class, the exact species involved in this web vary depending on the geographic location.

A generalized tundra food web. Exact relationships and species depend on geographic location.

The interconnected nature of a food web ways that equally numbers of one species increase (or decrease), other populations change in response. An often-discussed tundra example is the lemming population. Lemmings are modest rodents that feed on plants. Populations of lemmings fluctuate radically (from large populations to nearly extinction) in regular intervals. While scientists believed that populations of lemming predators (foxes, owls, skuas, and stoats) too fluctuated in response to these changes, in that location is now evidence that suggests that the predators themselves drive the changes in lemming populations.

Climatic change is affecting tundra ecosystems in many ways. Thawing permafrost non only releases carbon dioxide but also leads to coastal erosion– an increasing problem in Alaska where villages are at chance. Warming too means that seasons are arriving earlier – a shift not only in temperatures just also in the emergence and flowering of plants. Biologists suspect that a mismatch between establish availability and calving is increasing mortality rates of caribou calves. Finally, species distributions may change as birds and other animals shift their range or migration patterns in response to irresolute temperatures.

ANTARCTIC TUNDRA

Much less extensive than Arctic tundra, Antarctic tundra is plant on the Antarctic Peninsula and several Antarctic and subantarctic islands. These areas have rocky soil that supports minimal constitute life: two flowering plant species, mosses, algae, and lichens. Antarctic tundra does non support mammals, but marine mammals and birds inhabit areas about the coast. All species in Antarctica and the Antarctic Islands (s of 60 degrees S latitude) are protected by the Antarctic Treaty.

LINKS

The World's Biomes
An overview of biomes and data on six major types: freshwater, marine, desert, wood, grassland, and tundra.

Biomes and Ecosystems
General information well-nigh biomes and ecosystems, with links to pages about tundra, taiga, temperate forest, tropical rainforest, desert, grassland, and body of water biomes. This site may also be used with upper-uncomplicated students.

Geography4Kids: Biosphere
Includes pages on environmental, ecosystems, food bondage, populations, and land biomes. Advisable for utilize with upper-elementary students.

NATIONAL Science Instruction STANDARDS: SCIENCE CONTENT STANDARDS

The unabridged National Science Instruction Standards document can be read online or downloaded for gratuitous from the National Academies Press web site. The following excerpt was taken from Chapter 6.

Teaching almost biomes (including the tundra) can meet a wide diverseness of fundamental concepts and principles, including:

K-iv Life Science

The Characteristics of Organisms

Organisms have basic needs. For instance, animals need air, water, and food; plants require air, water, nutrients, and lite. Organisms tin can survive merely in environments in which their needs can exist met. The world has many different environments, and distinct environments support the life of different types of organisms.

Organisms and their Environments

All animals depend on plants. Some animals eat plants for food. Other animals consume animals that swallow the plants.
An organism's patterns of behavior are related to the nature of that organism'southward surround, including the kinds and numbers of other organisms present, the availability of food and resources, and the concrete characteristics of the surroundings. When the environment changes, some plants and animals survive and reproduce, and others die or motility to new locations.
All organisms cause changes in the environment in which they live. Some of these changes are detrimental to the organism or other organisms, whereas others are beneficial.
Humans depend on their natural and constructed environments. Humans change environments in means that can be either beneficial or detrimental for themselves and other organisms.

One thousand-4 Science in Personal and Social Perspectives

Changes in Environments

Environments are the infinite, weather condition, and factors that bear upon an individual'south and a population'south ability to survive and their quality of life.
Changes in environments can be natural or influenced by humans. Some changes are good, some are bad, and some are neither good nor bad. Pollution is a change in the environment that can influence the health, survival, or activities of organisms, including humans.
Some environmental changes occur slowly, and others occur rapidly. Students should understand the dissimilar consequences of changing environments in small increments over long periods as compared with irresolute environments in large increments over brusk periods.

v-8 Life Science

Populations and Ecosystems

A population consists of all individuals of a species that occur together at a given identify and fourth dimension. All populations living together and the concrete factors with which they collaborate compose an ecosystem.
Populations of organisms can be categorized past the office they serve in an ecosystem. Plants and some microorganisms are producers – they brand their own food. All animals, including humans, are consumers, which obtain nutrient by eating other organisms. Decomposers, primarily bacteria and fungi, are consumers that use waste material materials and dead organisms for nutrient. Nutrient webs identify the relationships among producers, consumers, and decomposers in an ecosystem.
For ecosystems, the major source of energy is sunlight. Energy entering ecosystems equally sunlight is transferred by producers into chemical energy through photosynthesis. That free energy then passes from organism to organism in nutrient webs.
The number of organisms an ecosystem can support depends on the resources available and abiotic factors, such as quantity of calorie-free and water, range of temperatures, and soil composition. Given adequate biotic and abiotic resource and no disease or predators, populations (including humans) increase at rapid rates. Lack of resources and other factors, such as predation and climate, limit the growth of populations in specific niches in the ecosystem.

v-8 Science in Personal and Social Perspectives

Populations, Resources, and Environments

When an expanse becomes overpopulated, the environment will become degraded due to the increased utilise of resources.
Causes of ecology degradation and resource depletion vary from region to region and from country to state.

Natural Hazards

Internal and external processes of the earth organisation cause natural hazards, events that change or destroy human being and wild fauna habitats, damage property, and damage or kill humans. Natural hazards include earthquakes, landslides, wildfires, volcanic eruptions, floods, storms, and even possible impacts of asteroids.
Human activities also can induce hazards through resources acquisition, urban growth, state-use decisions, and waste disposal. Such activities can accelerate many natural changes.

This article was written by Jessica Fries-Gaither. For more information, see the Contributors page. Email Kimberly Lightle, Principal Investigator, with any questions nearly the content of this site.

Copyright March 2009 – The Ohio State University. This material is based upon work supported past the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0733024. Whatever opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this fabric are those of the author(s) and do non necessarily reflect the views of the National Scientific discipline Foundation. This work is licensed under an Attribution-ShareAlike iii.0 Unported Artistic Commons license .

Source: https://beyondpenguins.ehe.osu.edu/issue/tundra-life-in-the-polar-extremes/life-in-the-tundra

Posted by: collinscapon1936.blogspot.com