Intro Quiz: How have plants and animals adapted to taiga forests?

Video: How have plants and animals adapted to taiga forests?

﻿Hi, it's Miss Lowes here and welcome to the fifth lesson in the geography of Russia unit. In the previous lesson in this unit, we looked at the different biomes in Russia and the climate that affects them. We looked at different factors, like the latitude that affects the colder climates we find particularly in Northern Russia and also the westerly winds that move across bringing dryer air that affects the level of precipitation we find in different biomes in Russia. Today though, we're going to zoom in on one biome, we're going to focus on that large biome that sits across the majority of the central area of Russia, the taiga forests. But we're going to specifically focus on the different plants and animals that have adapted to live there in this environment. Before we do that, though, I need you to make sure of a couple of things. Can you please make sure that you have a pen and paper or something to write on and with. If you've got any apps or notifications going on in the background of your device and you know how to turn them off, please do that because it will help you to focus with me for the rest of this lesson. Equally, if you're able to, if you could find somewhere quiet away from distractions so you can give this lesson a hundred percent of your focus and time, that would be fantastic. If you need to pause this video to do those things, that's absolutely fine. If not, let's crack on. So, as I mentioned, we're going to focus in on this large biome that we find in Russia that covers a lot of the land mass across the middle of the country of Russia. And this is called the taiga forest. It's sometimes also referred to as coniferous woodland or as boreal forest, but we're going to refer to it as the taiga forest. This is the area here, point D, in this kind of blue colour. And then this is what that looks like in real life. So we've got a lot of dense, coniferous, woodland. We've got a lot of the same species, a dominant type of tree. These are pine trees or fir or spruce and they're evergreen. So let's see, before we start to think about adaptations, exactly what or how we would describe that woodland. So I'd like you to describe the characteristics of the vegetation in the taiga forest. I've written a paragraph for you, but it's incomplete. At several points in here, I've given you two options in bold. You need to choose the correct of those two options. So here it says in taiga forests, the vegetation is dense/sparse. You need to choose either dense or sparse to write into your paragraph, whichever one you think is correct. Are you ready? Okay, pause the video and have a go at that please. Done? Let's check them. So you should have had in taiga forests, the vegetation is dense. Trees are evergreen. Most of them are known as coniferous. The dominant trees are tall and have needle leaves. So let's think about climate. We talked about this in the previous lesson in this unit, but we're going to delve into this a bit more because it's one of the key factors that plants and animals living in this environment will have to adapt to. We've got actually very different climatic experiences in the summer versus in the winter. In the summer, it can get fairly warm, whereas in the winter, we've got deep levels of snow, very cold freezing temperatures for a few months of the year. We find these taiga forests at 60 north or higher. Where winter temperatures are cold due to the sun's rays hitting the earth here at an angle. Due to the earth's tilt, there's limited sunlight for some months of the year. So the days in winter get a lot shorter with the hours of sunlight being a lot lower, a lot like we have in the UK except much, much shorter daylight hours in the winter. Equally in the summer, it means that the sun is up for a much longer time and it only goes down for a couple of hours in the middle of the night. So we're going to have another look at climate graphs. This is a graph that you will have seen if you did the previous lesson with me, I'll remind you how to read it, so don't panic if you weren't there or if you can't quite recall. What we've got here is we've got two pieces of data on a climate graph. We've got the temperature, which is our red line. So red for temperature. And we've got the bars in blue, which are our precipitation. So blue for rainfall, for precipitation. We need to make sure that we read off the correct axis and to support you with doing this, I've color-coded the line and the axis. So if we wanted the temperature in October, we'd go to the middle of the October bar, we'd go up, we'd stop at our temperature line, and then we're going to find the axis to read off that matches the same colour. So we're going to go across to the right, to the temperature axis, which is red. And we've got five degrees C in October. If we wanted to do rainfall, say for May, we'll go to the middle of the month of May. We'll go all the way up until we reach the top of the blue bar for rainfall. Reach the top of the blue bar, and because it's blue, we're going to read across to the left on precipitation over here. And it's around 49 or 50 millimetres of precipitation. Because it's quite difficult to read this off a screen with a lot of accuracy, particularly on this side where the intervals are quite large on your axis, when you are answering the questions, I will allow two either sides. So for example, if you're reading December rainfall, so we've gone to the top of this bar and we go across to about there. If you say 22, I'll accept it. And if you say 26, I'll accept it, I make that about 24 because it is so hard to see. So I'll accept your answers within a couple of points away from where I make the answers to be, okay? So what is the average temperature in winter and summer? So January and July I'm looking for specifically. And what is the average precipitation in these same months? So remember if you're reading temperature, you're looking for the line and you're reading across the red side, on the right. And if you're looking for precipitation, you're reading the blue bars and you're reading off the left axis, which is blue. Okay, pause the video here and have a go at that please. Have you got them? Are you ready to check it? Okay. So in winter, January, I got -12 degrees. If you're one or two away from that, that's fine. You can have the mark. Summer, July, 16 degrees. Whereas our precipitation in winter in January is 44 mil and in July, it's 60 millimetres. If you need to pause the video to check those off, change any, that's fine. If not, we'll move on. So, now we're going to look at overall trends on this graph. We're confident that we know, you know how to read it in terms of individual months, but let's have a look at how we kind of synthesise this data for ourselves to get a real feel for what the climate is like in the taiga forest. So you'll notice that there are periods of the year where there's much more rainfall. So the summer is a wetter season and our dry season kind of runs from October, with the exception of January, all the way to April. We know that we get our freezing temperatures between November and March, for example. I'm going to ask you to check the temperature range. The range in a set of data is the difference between the lowest number in the set of data and the highest number in the set of data. So if you were calculating the range for rainfall, you'd find the lowest bar and find its number, so 20, and you'd find the highest bar and find its number, so 60, and the range is the difference between those two numbers. So the range in precipitation on this graph is 40 millimetres, it's the difference between 60 and 20. With these five statements, what I'm asking you to do is just write whether they are true or false, using the graph to check those things. So you're just writing whether they are true or false, you don't need to correct them. You can, if you want to, that would be great, actually, if you could, but you just need to write true or false. That's all I'm looking for at the moment. Okay, pause the video. Off you go. Brilliant, let's check them. So the wet season is during the winter. That's not the case because we said that actually the wet season, look, is between May and maybe August, September. So that's the summer, so that is false. It should be the summer. The temperature range is 28 degrees C. True. The wettest month is January. False. Our wettest month, look, is July. The driest month is March. Also false, our driest month is October. It was very close to March, but it is that little bit lower. Between November and March, the ground is likely to be frozen. True. And the reason for that is that we're in negative temperatures between November and March. If we're considering plant and animal adaptations in a specific environment, we need to understand the environment that they are adapting to. So in the taiga forest, there are two key challenges for vegetation and animals to adapt to. We've got extremely cold temperatures and the lack of sunlight, particularly in the winter when the days are shorter. We've seen from our climate graphs that in winter, there are several months of the year where temperatures are consistently below zero degrees Celsius. This is the biggest challenge for life in the taiga forest. In the winter, we have the added challenge of a lack of sunlight because of the earth's tilt causing days to be shorter at this time of year. This is a particular challenge for vegetation because we know that plants need sunlight in order to photosynthesize and survive. We're going to focus on two native animals to start with. And we have ptarmigans, I know there's a sneaky P there, but it's actually a silent P and we pronounce it ptarmigans, almost like that P isn't there. And these are birds that live in the taiga forest. They're well insulated against cold temperatures. So they've got plenty of layers and they have thick, downy feathers to keep them warm. And this is particularly useful in the winter temperatures to allow them to survive in this environment. Caribous, which look like this, are migratory, which means they move over large distances at different points in the year to find food. And a lot of what they are eating is mosses. And obviously if there's significant amounts of snowfall or other things that might affect the growth of mosses, they're able to move over quite a significant distance in order to find the food they need to survive in this environment. We also have one particular plant that has adapted a lot to live in this environment, and this is the coniferous tree. And you will recognise this tree, I think you will have seen it in the UK, particularly around Christmas. And this is something that that is dominant in the taiga forest. And we've seen that when we've seen photos of the taiga forest, this dense, oops, sorry. This dense vegetation, but that vegetation is pretty much all coniferous trees. And there's lots of ways that these trees have adapted. They've adapted to heavy snowfall, they're a cone shape, which helps them to shed that snowfall quickly so they can continue to grow and can continue to receive sunlight, et cetera. They're also adapted to the short growing season, so they're evergreen. They don't shed their leaves in winter like deciduous trees do. This allows them to photosynthesize whenever they have the opportunity, when temperatures rise above three degrees C because anything below three degrees C, trees are struggling to photosynthesize. They're also adapted to the amount of water and the amount of sunlight by having needles instead of larger, flat leaves like you might see on other trees. And these needles reduce the surface area of the leaves and they reduce the amount of water therefore being lost through evapotranspiration off these leaves because the surface area is smaller. We're also adapted to the amount of sunlight. Roots are shallow and wide and this supports the trees and allows them to collect nutrients over a large distance. This is related to sunlight because due to the lack of sunlight in the dense canopy of trees, nutrients aren't very deep within the soil. And they're shallow within the soil, they're only really within the top soil layer. So roots need to be wide enough to collect nutrients from a wider area of shallow soil. But also by putting their roots out wide, it helps to stabilise these tall trees in high winds that the taiga forest can experience. On the screen for you now, I have six different statements about both animals and vegetation. I'd like you to sort these, please, into adaptations to climate and adaptations to the lack of sunlight. Off you go. Ready? Brilliant. Let's check them. So one and two were adaptations to sunlight, the evergreen of the trees, which allows them to photosynthesize at a variety of points. And we've also got the wide trees that helps them collect nutrients. The reason this is related to sunlight is because we said that a lack of sunlight was the reason that nutrients weren't deep in the soil. And then we've got the remaining four, which are adaptations to the cold winter climate. We've come to our final task for today, and there are two things I'd like you to do. Explain how vegetation is adapted to the conditions of the taiga forest, and explain how animals have adapted to the conditions of the taiga forest. And for each one of these questions, I want you to name the plant or animal. So it'll either be coniferous trees, ptarmigans, or caribous. Identify the adaptation, so what has that plant or animal done to adapt and explain how this helps it to survive, linking it to the cold temperatures of the climate and the lack of sunlight. Before you start though, I've got an example for you. So I've chosen to look at the pine tree and it's evergreen-ness. So I've color-coded the success criteria for you here so you can see where I am hitting at at each point. The pine tree, so that's the name. I could have written the coniferous tree as well, but I've gone with the pine tree, has adapted to the taiga biome as they are evergreen. So that's the adaptation, the fact they are evergreen. Now comes my explanation. This allows them to photosynthesize when temperatures rise above three degrees C, meaning they can continue to grow and survive even when it is cold and there is limited sunlight. So I'm going to hand it over to you. I have obviously already talked about the trees being evergreen. So I don't want you to do that one because I've just showed you exactly what that should look like. But I want you to use my example that I've just done with you to have a go at, well, it'll be one animal, one of these two, and one vegetation, one of these three. So it's your choice. So one animal, one vegetation. And this is your success criteria. Pause the video here and have a go at that. Good luck! Finished? You sure? Super. Well, let's look at a final example then for today. So I've done pine trees again, but I'm doing a different adaptation. Pine trees have adapted to the taiga biome because they have needle-like leaves which are covered in a waxy coating. This means that the surface area of the leaves is reduced meaning that water loss from the trees is reduced from strong, cold winds, meaning the tree can survive in dry periods as the taiga receives low amounts of rainfall. And then my animal. The caribou has adapted to the taiga biome because they are migratory. This means they move over large distances throughout the year to find food to feed on. This means they're able to survive even in the cold temperatures and limited vegetation, mainly mosses, to feed on. If you want to pause this here and check your answers off against those or change it or add anything to your answers, that's absolutely fine. If not, we'll move on. Well, we've reached the end of the fifth lesson of the geography of Russia unit. Massive well done from me, you've done really, really well today. We focused really on the plants and animals and how they're adapted to the harsh conditions, the climate conditions, of the taiga forest. In the next lesson in this unit, we are going to continue to talk about the taiga forest, but we're going to think about the threats to the forest and how human activity is causing real problems in the taiga forest. But from me now for today, that's it. So I just want to say a massive thank you. Take care of yourselves and enjoy your learning for the rest of the day. Okay, bye.

Exit Quiz: How have plants and animals adapted to taiga forests?

Completed: How have plants and animals adapted to taiga forests?

In this lesson we will consider the features of the taiga forest which make it difficult for animals and plants to survive. We will learn about the different ways both animals and plants have had to adapt to live in the taiga forest.

Geography

How have plants and animals adapted to taiga forests?

Introductory Quiz

Video

Final Quiz

Lesson Complete