The theme for 2017 BioPhotoContest is represented by a particularly and interesting biome. It constitutes the largest continuous forest area in the world: The Boreal Forest.
The Boreal Forest or Taiga, which in Russian means coniferous forest, form a wide, unbroken band of forest that surrounds the northern areas of the American continents, Europe and Asia. The taiga is a young biome, in fact, the retreat of the ice from the Boreal region has been a relatively recent event in most areas of the Earth. It is a “cold forest”, formed largely, but not exclusively, from conifers can tolerate the rigours of sub-arctic continental climate, with long, harsh winters and short summers. It also includes a percentage of deciduous trees and its undergrowth is discontinuous, sometimes occupied by shrubs, sometimes by mosses and lichens, always very poor. The taiga is on predominantly wet land and, in the frequent clearings, houses vast wetlands such as swamps and bogs, so that in many places it looks like a mosaic of forests and bogs.
GEOGRAPHY OF BOREAL FOREST
The Boreal forest goes north to the tundra limits and southwards to end in a temperate forest
(between birch trees, poplars and ash) in Europe and in the steppe in Asia.
It extends from the northern coasts of Asia in the Pacific Ocean, occupying most of Siberia,
northern Kazakhstan and northern Mongolia, to the northern coasts of the Atlantic Ocean covering
a large part of the Scandinavian Peninsula. It is found on the coasts of the Russian Primorje, home of the last Siberian tigers and the northern islands of Japan. In the Americas, it is covering much of the Canadian and Alaskan territory, reaching US territory in the Great Lakes and along the ridge of the Rocky Mountains.
BOREAL FOREST IN SOUTHERN EUROPE AND IN ITALY.
The presence of this type of forest in the Italian and southern European territory is limited to the alpine zone. Climate-related characters are replaced by the altitude and latitude boreal forest covers large areas in high alpine valleys. Its highest expression is represented by spruce forest and larch.