ARCTIC TUNDRAVictoria & Ye Jung

Victoria! We have to go to the tundra for our project!!

What? How? Our project is due on Thursday. There’s no time!!

Um… I have no idea!

I know! Let’s take the Magic Tree House!

The Magic Tree House doesn’t exist…

Yes it does!It’s right there!!!

Where are we going???

Where are we going???

Yej! Don’t you remember? There’s a book in the treehouse that tells you where we’re going!

It says we’re going to…

Greenland Tundra!

Brr… it’s cold!

I think this tundra is in the Northern Hemisphere, below the ice-covered polar seas; 60-70 degrees latitude. It’s located within the arctic circle around the ice cap of the frozen North Pole!

Hey, this tundra is also like tundra in Russia, Alaska, Sweden, Finland, and Canada!

How did you know that?

I just do.

Where the biome is (location) and what other places in the

world would be similar

Winter temperature = -20 to -30 degrees Celsius. Summer temperature = 3 to 12 degrees Celsius, which can sustain some life.

This tundra has an extremely cold climate. Tundra is known for cold, desert-like conditions!

Tundra? More like tun-dry!

Rainfall varies in different areas of the arctic tundra. The yearly precipitation is 15-25 cm, and the average precipitation is less than 25cm!

What sort of climate you experienced or could at any time of year (temperatures

and precipitation)

The tundra has layers of permanently frozen soil called permafrost, as we can see here!

The flat terrain allows no drainage. In summer, pools and marshes are caused by the top soil melting.

The tundra is cold and dark for most of the year, but the brief summer has 24 hours of daylight everyday.

Summers in the tundra only last 50-60 days. Poor kids, the summer breaks are even shorter than ours!

What it looks like (physical features)

Where are the trees?

There are no trees! There are only short grasses, lichens, and mosses, Arctic crocus, shrubs, sedges, reindeer mosses, and liverworts.

Plants grow close to the ground. There are 400 variations of flowers but the growing season is short.

Hey… I think I see a butterfly over there. Let’s go check it out!

How the plants are different/what plants you

saw

That’s not just any butterfly… that’s a Greenland Sulfur Butterfly!

Oh, I’ve heard of them! They’re an animal in the Arctic Tundra, along with Arctic foxes, hares, Caribou, and snowy owls. Animals can live in the tundra because of certain features that help them adapt.

Right! You’re forgetting a few, though. Varied birds (ravens, snow buntings, falcons, loons, sandpipers, terns, snow birds, varied types of gulls), lemmings, voles, arctic squirrels, wolves, polar bears, cod, flatfish, salmon, trout, mosquitoes, flies, moths, grasshoppers, blackflies, & arctic bumblebees!

You said I was missing “a few”..

Some unique animals you saw/tried to see and how

they are different

Doesn’t the word “tundra” come from the Finnish word tunturia, meaning “treeless plain”?

Yeah! The tundra is known as the “cold desert”, and it’s known for having frost-molded landscapes, low temperatures, little precipitation, poor nutrients, and short growing seasons.

The issues & challenges the tundra faces include pollution, hunting, and global warming. Which tundra? There are actually two

types of tundra: Arctic tundra and Alpine tundra. The difference between arctic and alpine is mainly that alpine is better drainage, has a higher altitude, and can be found worldwide

EXTRA INFO

• More animals

Hey! How did we get back home without the Magic Tree House?

I don’t know, but that was a strange vacation.

You know what would be even stranger, though? If there were a bunch of weirdos who were watching us while we were on vacation this whole time.

WORKS CITED

• BC SCIENCE 10 TEXTBOOK• http://s.ngm.com/2007/12/permafrost/img/permafrost_feature.jpg• doramarth.blogspot.com• theedeonknight.deviantart.com• www.brandonhall.com• ecosystems.mbl.edu• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpine_tundra• http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/glossary/gloss5/biome/tundra.html• http://www.bornfree.org.uk/wild-crew/habitat-conservation/habitat/arctic-

tundra/