VIDEO: Tundra and Taiga

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The name Taiga is actually only common in northern Eurasian parlance. Strictly speaking, the taiga must be called a boreal coniferous forest in our language usage.

This is what characterizes the tundra

  • The word tundra comes from the Sami language language and means something like without trees or treeless. This already describes a basic characteristic of the tundra. You will mainly find huge open spaces in the tundra.
  • The tundra is located in the sub-polar regions and only has a vegetation period of around three months. In these warmest months of the year, the average temperatures are around 8 ° C.
  • With such a short growing season and such low temperatures, trees cannot thrive. Even larger shrubs cannot thrive in these climatic conditions.
  • The plants found in the tundra belong to the alpine plants that are used to the cold. Many plants that you know from the Alps can also be found in these flat stretches of land. In addition to the mosses and ferns adapted to this climatic zone, there are also a few low dwarf shrubs.
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  • The loose soil is - due to the permafrost of the tundra - so thin that higher plants cannot anchor themselves in the frozen soil. Deep-rooters, who would probably tolerate the climatic conditions, can therefore not survive in the tundra.

Such is the taiga vegetation

  • As the actually correct name, boreal coniferous forest, already tells you, the conifers are able to thrive in this climatic zone. You can only find the taiga or boreal coniferous forests in the northern hemisphere of the world.
  • You can find the boreal coniferous forests in Alaska and Canada, as well as in Scandinavia, Mongolia and Siberia.
  • In the climatic zone where the taiga is native, you will find winters that last at least 6 months. In the other months, the daytime temperature does not rise above 10 ° C.
  • You will find mainly spruce and pine trees in the taiga. However, the further north you go and the colder it gets, the more larches you will come across. Larch trees can shed their needles when it gets too cold and thus protect themselves from freezing.
  • Here in the boreal coniferous forests you will also find berry bushes such as the lingonberry or the blueberry.

In short, you can describe the difference between tundra and taiga in such a way that you first have to pass through the taiga on the way to the subpolar regions and then get through the tundra to the polar ice.

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