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Arctic Tundra Factsheet (PDF) Introduction • The word “tundra” comes from a word used by the Sami people of northwestern Russia that means “barren land” or “treeless land.” • The tundra is the world’s youngest biome, having formed about 10,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age. • Humans have been living in Canada’s tundra for the past 5,000 years. • The Arctic tundra contains the largest amount of fresh water available for biodiversity than any other biome. • There are three types of tundra worldwide—the Arctic tundra, the 1 Tundra, Baffin Island, in Nunavut Antarctic tundra and the Alpine tundra—which share similar conditions. Description The Arctic tundra is the biome that lies between the edge of the taiga (or boreal forest), or tree line, and the permanent ice caps closer to the North Pole or the Arctic Ocean. It is composed of a variety of landscapes, from sweeping lowlands to towering mountains. Often thought of as a barren and somewhat rocky biome, the tundra surrounds the pole and is the dominant biome in the Arctic and Subarctic regions. In Canada, the Arctic tundra can be found in Yukon, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, northeastern Manitoba, northern Ontario, northern Quebec and northern Labrador. Worldwide, it is found in 2 Tundra on Bylot Island, Nunavut Alaska, Greenland, Russia, Iceland and parts of Scandinavia. Physical characteristics of the tundra are low temperatures (the winter average temperature is -34°C, the summer average is between 3°C and 12°C), low precipitation levels (between 15 to 25 centimetres including melting snow, which is drier than most deserts), high winds and no sunlight for as many as 163 days per year in its northern areas. These conditions create a harsh climate. The growing season is short, with only 50 to 60 days per year when temperatures are high enough for plants to grow. Biodiversity is also low, compared to most other biomes, as not many species are able to adapt to survive in the tundra. Since the temperatures are so low, soil is very slow to form. There is a thin, 25 to 100 centimetre melt layer in summer, called the active Canada’s Arctic Tundra layer, which is soil that goes through a freeze-and-thaw cycle annually. Below this layer is the permafrost, which stays permanently frozen. 3 Map of biomes of the world with Arctic, Antarctic and Alpine tundra in purple. The Arctic tundra is at the northern extremity of North America, Europe and Asia. Winters on the tundra are long, dark and cold. Snowfall is low and most of the ground becomes covered with packed, dense and hard snow. In some areas, high winds can cause thick snowdrifts that become hard packed. During the summer, the snow and the soil layers above the permafrost (the active layer) melt. This creates and feeds a vast network of lakes, streams, rivers and wetlands. The waterlogged soil and 24-hour sunshine boost rapid plant growth, and in lower latitudes of tundra even lush, densely packed plant mats can grow. This forms a beautiful landscape and provides food for wildlife that either lives in the Arctic year around or migrates there to take advantage of the rich burst of food that is suddenly available in summer. 2 Canada’s Arctic Tundra 4 Aerial view of the tundra in the summer 5 Aurora borealis are common in the Arctic tundra at nighttime Plants and Fungi Nearly 2,000 species of plants, mainly mosses, sedges, grasses and flowering plants, form the vegetation of the tundra. The diversity of species decreases gradually from the tree line to the permanent ice caps farther north. Because of the climate, permafrost and short summers, tree species such as birch and willow are ground cover—they grow horizontally, not upwards, in this biome. This also helps plants benefit from the insulating snow cover during the winter. Tundra plants need to grow fast during the limited amount of time that temperatures and sunlight permit. This makes the short-lived summer months very colourful; many stunning flowering plants, like the Dwarf Fireweed and Mountain Avens, are in bloom at this time. As the sun shines 24 hours per 6 Dwarf Fireweed day during the summer above the Arctic Circle, some Arctic plants can grow and develop very quickly, compared with their southern counterparts, in this indirect light. Plants living on the tundra have adapted to the short growing season, high winds, low temperatures, lack of humidity and low nutrient levels in the thin acidic soil. They have shallow root systems that can only grow in the active layer of soil, or the soil that is not frozen during the summer. Growing close to the ground to take shelter from the strong winds and take advantage of pockets of dark soil and rocks that absorb heat, tundra plants tend to stay short and grow flat on the soil, as is the case for the purple saxifrage, the Net-veined Willow and the other tundra shrubs. 7 The Net-veined Willow, a dwarf Arctic willow Another way for plants to stay warm is for different species to grow huddled together or for one individual species to grow in a specific pattern, such as a rosette or in thick mats, like the Moss Campion and Three Toothed Saxifrage. This traps warmer air between individual plants and helps growth. 3 Canada’s Arctic Tundra The shape of the flowers, leaves and stems can also be adapted for life in the Arctic. Some tundra plants, like the Mountain Cranberry, have desert plant–like adaptations, such as wooly hairs, thick leaves and a thick, waxy skin to prevent water loss from the leaves due to the drying winds. To prevent them from drying out, several plants have no stems at all! Some flowering plants, like the Arctic Poppy, have big flowers that can orient themselves to face the sun at all times. Their colour and shape also helps heat absorption. Others, like the Bog Rosemary, have downward facing flowers that act like little greenhouses. Warmer flowers or transparent seed pods mean that the seeds contained in them will mature more quickly, which is vital in the brief Arctic summers. Leaf colour is also important, which is why some species, like the Arctic blueberry, turn red at the end of the summer. This enables the plant to absorb a broader spectrum of light. Other species have evergreen leaves that start photosynthesis as soon as the soil thaws. Some can even grow while still under the snow, using nutrients stored in their roots! As seed production demands energy from plants, and seed survival 8 Iceland Poppy is uncertain during the harsh winters, some species, like the Primrose, produce nutrient-storing tubers, buds or rhizomes that stay underground and are ready for growth in the spring. Other plants that produce seeds have structures to help their dispersal. For example, Cottongrass is a sedge with tufts that help the seeds get carried by wind but also act as insulation. Because wetlands and lakes appear all over the landscape in summer, many tundra plant species have adapted to growing in very moist areas or even in water. Some, like the carnivorous bladderworts, can be submerged in water or float on top of it. 9 The Cloudberry is one of the berry plants which These plants are not only a food source for waterfowl, fish and grows in the tundra invertebrates that inhabit these ecosystems, but they also provide shelter to some of these same species. Mosses are very common and diverse in the tundra. Some species can grow directly, in the form of a mat, on rocks or soil, being devoid of roots and stems. They play a great role in the tundra, since they actually insulate the permafrost! These primitive plants also do not reproduce by seeds but rather produce spores, which use water and wind as a means of dispersal. Thus, mosses need high moisture to both reproduce and grow (they absorb water directly through their small, delicate leaves), but in the dry Arctic, they survive through droughts by going into dormancy. Peat moss 10 Cottongrass is common throughout the tundra in bogs or other wetlands. Mosses come in a variety of colours, like orange-red moss. One of the tundra’s species at risk is Porsild’s Bryum, which is a type of moss. 4 Canada’s Arctic Tundra Hardy lichens play an important role as a food source for a variety of species, including barren-ground caribou, which eats mostly reindeer lichen, a group of lichen species, in the winter. Lichens are the result of a symbiotic relationship, similar to the one that forms corals. Fungi provide a structure and the absorption of minerals from the environment (the rock, soil or plant it grows on), while algae or bacteria can produce energy from light via photosynthesis to feed themselves and the fungi. The alga or bacterium lives embedded within the fungus, and this association of different species makes for a great variety of lichens of different colours and shapes. Lichens, like mosses, need moisture to grow and can go into dormancy if conditions are too dry. Their growth is very slow, but they can live for extended periods of time (as much as 4,000 to 5,000 years!) if left undisturbed. Lichens are very sensitive to air pollution, and scientists use them as a bioindicator of air quality. 11 Mosses and lichens alongside short tamaracks in the southern tundra 12 Lichens (in gray) on the tundra ground vegetation and fungi Wildlife The harsh climate and conditions in the tundra biome mean very few species are able to thrive there.
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