Temperate broadleaf and mixed forests explained
Temperate broadleaf and mixed forest is a temperate climate terrestrial habitat type defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature, with broadleaf tree ecoregions, and with conifer and broadleaf tree mixed coniferous forest ecoregions.
These forests are richest and most distinctive in central China and eastern North America, with some other globally distinctive ecoregions in the Himalayas, Western and Central Europe, the southern coast of the Black Sea, Australasia, Southwestern South America and the Russian Far East.[1] [2]
Ecology
The typical structure of these forests includes four layers.[3]
- The uppermost layer is the canopy composed of tall mature trees ranging from 100to high. Below the canopy is the three-layered, shade-tolerant understory that is roughly 30to shorter than the canopy.
- The top layer of the understory is the sub-canopy composed of smaller mature trees, saplings, and suppressed juvenile canopy layer trees awaiting an opening in the canopy.
- Below the sub-canopy is the shrub layer, composed of low growing woody plants.
- Typically the lowest growing (and most diverse) layer is the ground cover or herbaceous layer.
Trees
In the Northern hemisphere, characteristic dominant broadleaf trees in this biome include oaks (Quercus spp.), beeches (Fagus spp.), maples (Acer spp.), or birches (Betula spp.).[3] The term "mixed forest" comes from the inclusion of coniferous trees as a canopy component of some of these forests. Typical coniferous trees include pines (Pinus spp.), firs (Abies spp.), and spruces (Picea spp.). In some areas of this biome, the conifers may be a more important canopy species than the broadleaf species. In the Southern Hemisphere, endemic genera such as Nothofagus and Eucalyptus occupy this biome, and most coniferous trees (members of the Araucariaceae and Podocarpaceae) occur in mixtures with broadleaf species, and are classed as broadleaf and mixed forests.
Climate
Temperate broadleaf and mixed forests occur in areas with distinct warm and cool seasons, including climates such as humid continental, humid subtropical, and oceanic, that give them moderate annual average temperatures: 3to. These forests occur in relatively warm and rainy climates, sometimes also with a distinct dry season. A dry season occurs in the winter in East Asia and in summer on the wet fringe of the Mediterranean climate zones. Other areas, such as central eastern North America, have a fairly even distribution of rainfall; annual rainfall is typically over 600mm and often over 1500mm, though it can go as low as 300mm in some parts of the Middle East and close to 6000mm in the mountains of New Zealand and the Azores. Temperatures are typically moderate except in parts of Asia such as Ussuriland, or the Upper Midwest, where temperate forests can occur despite very harsh conditions with very cold winters.
The climates are typically humid for much of the year, usually appearing in the humid subtropical climate and in the humid continental climate zones to the south of tundra and the generally subarctic taiga. In the Köppen climate classification they are represented respectively by Cfa, Dfa/Dfb southern range and Cfb, and more rarely, Csb, BSk and Csa.
Ecoregions
Eurasia
| Palearctic temperate broadleaf and mixed forests |
|---|
| Apennine deciduous montane forests | Italy |
| Atlantic mixed forests | Denmark, France, Belgium, Germany, Netherlands |
| Azores temperate mixed forests | Portugal |
| Balkan mixed forests | Bulgaria, Greece, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Turkey |
| Baltic mixed forests | Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Poland |
| Cantabrian mixed forests | Spain, Portugal |
| Caspian Hyrcanian mixed forests | Iran, Azerbaijan |
| Caucasus mixed forests | Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Russia, Turkey, Iran |
| Celtic broadleaf forests | United Kingdom, Ireland |
| Central Anatolian deciduous forests | Turkey |
| Central China loess plateau mixed forests | China |
| Central European mixed forests | Austria, Germany, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Belarus, Czech Republic, Ukraine |
| Central Korean deciduous forests | North Korea, South Korea |
| Changbai Mountains mixed forests | China, North Korea |
| Changjiang Plain evergreen forests | China |
| Crimean Submediterranean forest complex | Russia, Ukraine |
| Daba Mountains evergreen forests | China |
| Dinaric Mountains mixed forests | Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Italy, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia |
| East European forest steppe | Bulgaria, Moldova, Romania, Russia, Ukraine |
| Eastern Anatolian deciduous forests | Turkey |
| English Lowlands beech forests | United Kingdom |
| Euxine-Colchic deciduous forests | Bulgaria, Georgia, Turkey |
| Hokkaido deciduous forests | Japan |
| Huang He Plain mixed forests | China |
| Madeira evergreen forests | Portugal |
| Manchurian mixed forests | China, North Korea, Russia, South Korea |
| Nihonkai evergreen forests | Japan |
| Nihonkai montane deciduous forests | Japan |
| North Atlantic moist mixed forests | Ireland, United Kingdom |
| Northeast China Plain deciduous forests | China |
| Pannonian mixed forests | Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine, Croatia |
| Po Basin mixed forests | Italy |
| Pyrenees conifer and mixed forests | France, Spain, Andorra |
| Qin Ling Mountains deciduous forests | China |
| Rodope montane mixed forests | Bulgaria, Greece, North Macedonia, Serbia |
| Sarmatic mixed forests | Russia, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Belarus |
| Sichuan Basin evergreen broadleaf forests | China |
| South Sakhalin-Kurile mixed forests | Russia |
| Southern Korea evergreen forests | South Korea |
| Taiheiyo evergreen forests | Japan |
| Taiheiyo montane deciduous forests | Japan |
| Tarim Basin deciduous forests and steppe | China |
| Ussuri broadleaf and mixed forests | Russia |
| West Siberian broadleaf and mixed forests | Russia |
| Western European broadleaf forests | Switzerland, Austria, France, Germany, Czech Republic |
| Zagros Mountains forest steppe | Iran, Iraq, Turkey | |
Americas
See also
External links
Notes and References
- Book: Zhao. Ji. Zheng. Guangmei. Wang. Huadong. Xu. Jialin. 1990. The natural history of China. McGraw-Hill Publishing Company. New York.
- Book: Martin. WH. SG. Boyce. AC. Echternacht. 1993. Biodiversity of the southeastern United States: Lowland terrestrial communities. John Wiley and Sons. New York.
- Web site: https://web.archive.org/web/20110401124425/http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/ecoregions/about/habitat_types/selecting_terrestrial_ecoregions/habitat04.cfm. 2011-04-01. Temperate Broadleaf and Mixed Forest Ecoregions. World Wide Fund for Nature. 2019-05-29. dead.
