12 Facts About Boreal forest

Taiga, generally referred to in North America as a boreal forest or snow forest, is a biome characterized by coniferous forests consisting mostly of pines, spruces, and larches.

The southern part is the closed canopy Boreal forest, consisting of many closely spaced trees with mossy ground cover.

In Canada, Scandinavia and Finland, the boreal forest is usually divided into three subzones: The high boreal or taiga zone; the middle boreal ; and the southern boreal, a closed canopy boreal forest with some scattered temperate deciduous trees among the conifers, such as maple, elm and oak.

The boreal forest is home to many types of berries; some are confined to the southern and middle closed boreal forest ; others grow in most areas of the taiga, and some can grow in both the taiga and the low arctic tundra .

The cold winters and short summers make the taiga a challenging biome for reptiles and amphibians, which depend on environmental conditions to regulate their body temperatures, and there are only a few species in the boreal forest including red-sided garter snake, common European adder, blue-spotted salamander, northern two-lined salamander, Siberian salamander, wood frog, northern leopard frog, boreal chorus frog, American toad, and Canadian toad.

Related searches

Some areas of the more southern closed boreal forest have populations of other deer species such as the elk and roe deer.

Fire has been one of the most important factors shaping the composition and development of boreal forest stands; it is the dominant stand-renewing disturbance through much of the Canadian boreal forest.

The patchwork mosaic of forest stands in the boreal forest, typically with abrupt, irregular boundaries circumscribing homogenous stands, is indirect but compelling testimony to the role of fire in shaping the forest.

The fact is that most boreal forest stands are less than 100 years old, and only in the rather few areas that have escaped burning are there stands of white spruce older than 250 years.

Previously, the Boreal forest was protected by the restrictions of the Soviet Forest Ministry, but with the collapse of the Union, the restrictions regarding trade with Western nations have vanished.

The blocks are replanted with monocrop seedlings in the following season, but the trees do not grow back for many years, and the Boreal forest ecosystem is radically changed for hundreds of years.

Recent years have seen outbreaks of insect pests in Boreal forest-destroying plagues: the spruce-bark beetle in Yukon and Alaska; the mountain pine beetle in British Columbia; the aspen-leaf miner; the larch sawfly; the spruce budworm ; the spruce coneworm.