Climate
Shrub and woodlands are temperate areas of the earth. This means that they have hot, dry summers; cool, moist winters; thin poor-nourishing soil; and periodic fires.
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The temperate woodland and shrublands
are located in the red shaded places on the western coasts of North and South America, near the Mediterranean Sea, South Africa, and south of Australia.
Abiotic Factors
The typical soil temperate woodland and shrubland is a brown earth. This is a reasonably fertile, mildly acidic soil. Some water absorption during the more moist seasons happens and earthworm activity helps to mix up the soil.
Dry conditions create the danger of fire, which can spread quickly through shrublands because they tend to have long, running fields of shrubs and grasses that are very susceptible to wildfire and wind. Humans can help solve the problem by protecting shrublands from naturally occurring wildfires and allowing dead growth to build up.
Dry conditions create the danger of fire, which can spread quickly through shrublands because they tend to have long, running fields of shrubs and grasses that are very susceptible to wildfire and wind. Humans can help solve the problem by protecting shrublands from naturally occurring wildfires and allowing dead growth to build up.
Animals
- Coyotes (carnivore)
- Cougars (carnivore)
- Bears (omnivore)
- Foxes (carnivore)
- Bobcats (carnivore) These are all consumers except for the butterfly, they only drink
- Mountain Lions (carnivore)
- Blacktailed Deer (herbivore)
- Rabbits (herbivore)
- Squirrels (herbivore)
- Hawks (carnivore)
- Lizards (omnivore)
- Snakes (omnivore)
- Butterflies (only drink)
Plants
- Aromatic Herbs
- Sage
- Rosemary
- Thyme
- Oregano
- Shrubs These plants are all producers
- Grasses
- Evergreen Trees
- Cork Oak
- Berry bushes
- Wildflowers
Major threats and conservation ideas
Droughts
- Because shrublands tend to occur in arid areas or high elevations, droughts are often a problem. Some shrubland plants developed the waxy coatings and spines of desert plants to help protect them against the horrible effects of long droughts, but other plants have weaker defenses. Human activity such as the building of dams can begin and increase droughts.
- Temperate shrublands often border areas that make good pasture or croplands. As a result, eventually shrublands are turned into commercial property for raising livestock or growing grains and other types of plants. This shrinks the overall size of the shrublands and the room that shrubland species have to expand.
- Species loss in shrublands typically occurs when humans hunt a species to extinction or near extinction, as happened with the American buffalo, among other species. Removing one species from the food chain in a shrubland has a lot of effects that do not help the biome.
Fun Facts
- All plant life is less than a meter long
- Leaves on the evergreen trees are small
- Workers strip the cork from cork oak trees
- Most of the animals are small and nocturnal