Question

How can you define 'boreal forest' or 'taiga' ?

Answer 1

Boreal forests are the earth's most common and overall largest land-based biome. Boreal forests are also known as taiga, a Russian word which simply means swampy, moist forest. Boreal forests are coniferous and contain large amounts of evergreen trees. This biome plays a large role in the conditions of our earth's climate.

Answer 2

Most species tend to have widespread distributions; low alpha and beta diversity.

Minimum Requirements

Large natural landscapes of taiga are critical to maintain populations of species that track resources that vary considerably in space and time (e.g., epizootic insect events, hare irruptions), viable populations of large carnivores require extensive natural areas because of large home range sizes; disturbance events such as fire and epizootics can cover extremely large areas - even whole landscapes; fire and epizootic events required for some successional processes; large-scale linkages of natural habitat are required to permit migrations of larger vertebrates and associated predators in response to seasonal changes or disturbances.

Sensitivity to Disturbance

Regeneration of mature forests takes very long periods of time due to the challenging climate and soil conditions; many larger vertebrates are sensitive to human presence or low intensity hunting; very sensitive to acid rain and other forms of pollutants.