I have chosen earth’s coldest biome, the arctic tundra for this week’s discussion post. The arctic tundra is one of the most fascinating biomes to me specifically for its exponential impact on this planet and delicate ecosystem.
The Arctic tundra is located in the far northern hemisphere along with several isolated islands off of the coast of Antarctica in the southern hemisphere. In the arctic tundra you can expect a lifeless and extreme environment with only two seasons that being winter and summer. Tundra is land with underlying permafrost and the arctic tundra has permafrost-reaching hundreds of feet thick and continues to get thicker the closer to the poles you go. Resulting from permafrost, deep roots cannot thrive thus tundra’s are tree-less and are only home to low shrubs, moss and lichen. The artic tundra is that of a bare, rocky land with extreme winds and sudden drops of temperature. On the contrary to the dark, cold and frozen winters the summer growing season is fifty to sixty days long with sun shining twenty four hours a day. Summer growing season allows a minimal amount of topsoil to thaw creating shallow lakes which leads to an explosion of life although mostly only insects and birds. Animals such as arctic foxes, polar bears, gray wolves, caribou, snow geese and musk oxen live in the arctic tundra year around despite all
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One third of the worlds soil bound carbon is in taiga and tundra areas and specifically 14% of earth’s carbon is in permafrost. Global warming is contributing to the melting of the permafrost and it is melting at an extraordinary speed thus releasing carbon dioxide into our ever so delicate planets atmosphere. The arctic tundra that withholds mass amounts of permafrost used to be a carbon sink, which safely homes carbon from the atmosphere but with global warming it is now a carbon