Dry-Land Environments

Dry-Land Environments - Forests

Our Earth has many different environments. Some of these are water environments and some are dry-land. Each environment has its own climate, animals, and plants. The dry-land environments include deserts, grasslands, rain forests, and forests. Let’s investigate forests!

Forests

Earth’s forests can be found all over the globe. The continents of North America, Europe, and Asia have the largest forests on the planet. About 1/3 of the United States is covered by these tree covered environments.

Plants

Earth’s forests can be deciduous or coniferous. Deciduous forests contain many different types of trees like maples, oaks, beech, and birch. As winter approaches, the leaves of these trees turn beautiful shades of gold, orange, and red before falling to the forest floor. Deciduous forests grow in regions that have warm, wet summers and cold winters. Some forests, however, are made up entirely of pine and fir trees. These forests are called coniferous or evergreen. Coniferous means the trees produce their seeds in cones (pinecones) and evergreen means that these trees do not lose their leaves in cold weather. Coniferous forests can be found in areas that have long, cold winters.

Animals

Forests provide plenty of food for a variety of insects, rodents, birds, and other animals. In a typical forest you can find populations of squirrels, mice, rabbits, owls, hawks, deer, fox, wildcats and bears. A population is a group of living things that are the same and live in the same place.

Herbivores like squirrels and rabbits can feast on acorns, berries, seeds, tree sap, grasses, and mushrooms while carnivores like hawks, and wildcats feed on the herbivores. Some animals in the forest eat plants and animals. These animals are called omnivores. Some forest omnivores include box turtles and woodpeckers.

The animals and plants in a forest make up a community. A community is all of the populations that live together in the same place.

It’s Elementary!