Biomes Of The World

50 Pages 12375 Words

BIOMES OF THE WORLD

RATIONALE FOR HIERARCHICAL ORGANIZATION OF THE WORLD'S ENVIRONMENTS
Life on Earth is extremely interesting, as most of us already know from television, if not from our own travels, and it becomes more so when each piece of the complex pattern fits understandably into the whole. One important goal of a biology curriculum should be to educate students about nature, in order to promote empathy and support for the natural world around us, and the interrelationship of all aspects of nature must be an integral part of the message delivered.
Biomes (bioclimatic zones) are appropriate divisions by which to organize the natural world, because the organisms that live in each of them possess common constellations of adaptations to them, in particular to the climate of each of the zones and to the characteristic vegetation types that develop in them. The primary elements to be dealt with under each zone were chosen because they are considered the basic elements at all levels, from the entire planet through each of its component physical environments to the species themselves.
The climate must be understood as perhaps the most important element in determining what kinds of organisms can live in an area and how they are modified to live under different conditions of temperature and precipitation and the seasonal distribution of these factors. Again, each spot on Earth has its own climate, influenced by both the macroclimate of the region and the microclimate of the particular site. But there are climatic commonalities on a grand scale that cause, for example, unrelated animals in the Sahara and Sonoran Deserts to have surprisingly much in common, and by effectively explaining these factors, an educational institution does much to fulfill its obligation to educate.
Soils are very important because they influence the types of plants (and thus plant communities) that will grow within a particular bioclimatic zone, and as s...