Where do we find them?

Europe

AsiaCanada

Alaska

northern Europe, In Alaska, Canada, and northern Asia

Because the northern coniferous forests are located so far north, plants and animals have adapted to survive.

Extreme cold in long winters and short summers with very short growing seasons. Winter days are that are very short, some with only 2 or 3 hours of sunlight. Summer days that are long, sometimes with more than 20 hours of daylight. are winters so long and summers so short?

Survive what?

Why

Because...as the Earth orbits the sun it is tilted the same way all the time.

winter in the northernconiferous forests.

summer in the northern coniferous forests.

During summer in the northern hemisphere Earth’s tilt points the north pole toward the sun where it gets more sunlight. So summer in the far north may last only 2-3 months but the days are very long.

Lots of sunlight

When Earth is on the opposite side of its orbit, it is tilted is away from the sun and the far north has winter for 6-7 months. Winter days are short--the sun may only rise for a few hours per day.

Lots of dark..

Milder in summer but cool --average temperature 57 degrees F.

Cold and snowy in winter-- average temperature 14 degrees F. (that is just 10º degrees warmer than the freezer in your house)

if you lived there.

Not a lot of rain or snow. Average annual rainfall 14-30 inches---more than a desert, less than a deciduous forest and much less than a rainforest.

Even with this small amount of precipitation, the coniferous forest has swampy regions called muskegs when the snow and ice melt.

Muskegs exist because in some areas beneath the forest floor, there is a layer of permanently frozen soil called permafrost; in other places there may be a giant layer of solid bedrock.

Both the permafrost and bedrock stop water from draining through the top layers of soil creating these shallow bogs or muskegs.

Muskegs can look like solid ground, because they are covered with moss, short grasses, and sometimes even trees. However, the ground is wet and spongy.

Conifer trees

pine firspruce

The major plants found in the Coniferous forests are:

Summer in the Coniferous Forest

Let’s now look at some adaptations that coniferous trees have allowing them to survive in the harsh conditions of the far north.

First, because Conifer trees must photosynthesize (make food) whenever they can, the leaves on coniferous treesstay green all year long.

summer winter

Conifer trees don’t drop leaves in the fall. The growing season is so short that re-growing new leaves each spring would be wasteful of the tree’s limited time for food production .

If the branches held snow, heavy wet snow would cause them to break.

Conifers are triangular shaped so that their branches will shed snow in the winter.

Do you think the beautiful acacia tree of the African Savanna would be very well adapted to the coniferous forest?Why?

The conifers have adapted by growing small needle shaped leaves with a waxy coating which help hold water inside the tree.

Most water in the soil of a coniferous forest is frozen during winter and there is not much precipitation in summer so coniferous trees must survive with very little water.

As the soil is often shallow (permafrost and/or bedrock) coniferous tree roots often spread horizontally and stay near the surface.

These waxy leaves are named “needles” because they are shaped like needles.

The tree’s name “conifer” comes from the word “cone” the structure used for reproduction.

Female cone

Male cone

Seeds for growing new coniferous trees are formed in protective cones

When these seeds are scattered and germinate, a new coniferous treeseedling grows.

Moose Beaver Wolf Black bear

Hawk Owl LynxWolverine

Red Squirrel

Snowshoe Hare

Decomposers

soil bacteria nematodesworms, protozoa, fungi

Conifer trees, shrubs, grass, ferns, moss

Plant eaters/primary consumers

A food web in the coniferous forest biome

Small predators, carnivores, insectivores

wolves LynxLarge predators

With long cold winters and scarce food, few animals winter in the northern coniferous forest. (more than 300 species of birds

and 32,000 species of insects).

In summer, however, a huge number of insects live in the marshy muskegs. And millions of birds from all over migrate there to feed on the insects.

only to return again the following spring.

Come winter, most of these birds migrate (move) south in order to find warmer weather, food and shelter....

With winters so long and cold in the northern coniferous forests almost no cold blooded reptiles and amphibians live there year round.

However, some warm blooded animals have adapted to living in these harsh conditions.

During winter, along with the cold, food is very hard to find for all animals.

As fall temperatures cool, birds and mammals that live all year long in the far northern forests grow extra fur or feathers.

This extra layer of fur or feathers provides insulation that helps prevent body heat from escaping during extreme winter conditions.

Most year-round inhabitants of the coniferous forest, including herbivores, omnivores and carnivores, really stuff themselves during the late summer and fall,eating all the food they can get.

They are storing food in their bodies as fat, which of course causes some serious weight gain.

Notice pictures of this black bear in the late fall and again in early spring. Bears can lose up to 40 percent of their weight between fall and spring.

full hungry

We shall see that many animals living through the winter in the northern coniferous forests are able to survive by storing food, either like this in their bodies or in caches.

During the cold winter when little food was available the bear lived on the extra layers of fat she had piled on in the fall. In addition to providing energy, those layers of fat helped her keep warm during the cold bitter winter.

Like the bear, other omnivores such as raccoons and skunks eat a lot of food in the fall. They store this extra food as fat preparing for a long cold winter when little food is available.

During the winter, they sleep in dens living off their stored fat, coming out only occasionally to look for food.

Two large herbivores, the moose and the elk live in the northern coniferous forest.

elk

moose

Since they don’t do extended sleeps during the winter, they depend on extra hair and fat to keep them warm during the cold winter.

In summer, moose eat large quantities of water plants from bogs or streams while elk eat primarily grasses. During winter both must survive on mostly twigs and bark.

The moose and elk survive on very different diets depending on the season.

Snowshoe hares are also herbivorous. They feed on grass, flowers, and other greenery in summer. In winter, they survive on buds, soft bark, and twigs.

For getting around in deep snow, both moose and snowshoe hares have very wide feet to keep them from sinking in the snow. Compare the examples. Another adaptation.

Moose hoofJack Rabbit

Snowshoe Rabbit

The abundant red squirrel’s summer diet includes seeds, fruit, nuts, bark, buds, fungi and insects. Occasionally they eat birds eggs, young birds and young mice but seeds inside a cone are by far their favorite food both summer and winter.

Red squirrels build nests in the conifer trees where they raise their babies.

Seed eating birds that live in the coniferous forest have beaks that are adapted to reaching in between the scales of cones to reach the seeds.

The Red Crossbill has a bill in which the upper and lower tips cross over each other. The bird bites between the scales of a cone and pries them apart by opening its bill. Then it dislodges the seed with its tongue.

Taiga Voles are cute little herbivores that live near streams and muskegs. They eat mostly moss and grass. Taiga voles dig underground burrows where they build nests of dry grasses. During August and September, they store food in these burrows. During the winter five to ten voles huddle together for warmth in a nest and share the stored food.

And, at the top of the food chain:

and the hawk owl.In the of northern coniferous forest we find the grey wolf,the lynx,

Some predatory birds such as the North Hawk Owl live year round in the northern coniferous forest and grow extra feathers in winter. A North Hawk Owls hunts mainly voles, red squirrels and snowshoe hares.

Lynx are covered with beautiful thick fur that keeps them warm during frigid winters. Their large furry paws hit the ground with a spreading toe motion that makes them function as natural snowshoes.

Lynx eat mice, squirrels, and birds, but prefer the snowshoe hare.

Grey wolves, who must continue to hunt through the winter, do grow an insulating layer of hair to keep warm. They hunt in packs. Whenever they can bring down an elk or moose, the pack eats well for a little while.

That’s it for the

Northern Coniferous Forests