High latitude tundra

1. High Latitude Tundra
Camila Riguero and Heather Sanchez
Period: 3

2. Other names
❖ Ice desert
❖ Frozen Prairie

3. Biome location/Climate
❖ Located in Alaska, Northern Canada, edges of Greenland,
Northern Siberia, and Russia.
❖ The soil is poor in nutrients, which accounts for the low
amount of vegetation. There’s an under layer of soil
permafrost, which remains frozen at all times. This allows
little room for deep rooting plants.
❖ The climate is typically windy and cold, as for rainfall its
minimal. It has cold winters and warm summers giving it a
typical temperate.

4. Climate Graph
Has a typical temperate temperature.

5. Nutrient Flow Diagram

6. Animals

7. Plants
Bearberry
Arctic moss
Pasque flower

8. Biodiversity, habitats, and niches
Characteristics of tundra include:
❖ Extremely cold climate
❖ Low biotic diversity
❖ Simple vegetation structure
❖ Limitation of drainage
❖ Short season of growth and reproduction
❖ Energy and nutrients in the form of dead organic material
❖ Large population oscillations

9. Energy Flow

10. Cont.

11. Productivity
❖ The tundra has some of the lowest net primary productivity
of any ecosystems due mainly to the cold and short growing
season and the infertile soils. Mean productivities range
from 10-400 g m-2
yr-1
, with a mean of 140 g m-2
yr-1
.
❖ The tundra biome produces only 600 Kilocalories/square
meter/year, which is much lower than the other biomes,
except for the Desert which produces less than 200.
❖ In the arctic tundra, snow cover persists into the spring
after air temperatures and light increase to levels suitable
for photosynthesis of vascular plants in the absence of snow
cover.

12. Succession
Since the tundra is made out of ice there are glaciers. When
earth began to warm up, glaciers began retreating leaving
behind lifeless, rugged land, making it harder for plants like the
pioneer plants to begin growing on rocks. As time passed on
rocks mixed with decaying lichens formed the first soil. When
soil is formed grass starts to grow, resulting in new grass
growing in that area. Then wind blew around dust which
congregated in small cracks in rocks where moss and small
plants started growing.

13. Cont.
Moss obtains water by absorbing moisture in the air, once this
occurs more moss and soil start forming. These stages of soil
and plant sophistication are a representation of primary
succession. This shows primary succession because it
demonstrates plants and animals developing in biomes where
there’s no topsoil. Secondary succession can occur in the
tundra after a mudslide or fire.

14. Human impact
❖ The most significant threat is global warming. This will
result in the permafrost melting radically changing the
landscape for the species residing in tundras.
❖ Oil spills hurt tundra ecosystems as it kills off wildlife.
❖ Invasive species push aside native vegetation, reducing
plant diversity.
❖ Exploration of oil, gas, and minerals and construction of
pipelines and roads can cause physical disturbances and
habitat fragmentation

15. Solutions
❖ Limit tourism and respect local cultures.
❖ Switch to alternative energy uses to minimize human-made
global warming.
❖ Limit road construction, mining activities, and the building
of pipelines in tundra habitat.