West Virginia Biomes, Essay Example

West Virginia has many different biomes due to its diversity of climates. The forests, woods, and mountains are all considered to be different biomes and can be further categorized based on their elevation and amount of precipitation received. The immediate area I live in is most closely related to a moist temperate coniferous forest; although nearby locations may possibly be considered temperate deciduous forests, the temperature requirements of my neighborhood match the temperate coniferous setting more closely.

Temperate coniferous forests are found throughout the United States, including diverse geographic regions such as Arizona, Florida, Colorado, sections of the Northeast, and sections of the Southeast. This biome is usually found in areas where there are mountains. The yearly temperature of the temperature coniferous forests ranges to negative forty degrees Celsius to twenty degrees Celsius; in the summer, the average temperature is ten degrees Celsius. The characteristic precipitation of this biome is between three-hundred and nine-hundred millimeters of rain per year, and the average location of this biome is between fifty and sixty degrees of latitude. This biome has long cold winters and warm humid summers; the seasons are well defined and there are at least four to six months without snow (Kelly, n.d.).

The animals in the coniferous forest include eagles, bob cats, moose, snakes, flies, geese, bunnies, lynx, frogs, beaver, owls, deer, squirrels, and foxes, although there are many different kinds of animals in these forests. The plants include moss, mushrooms, evergreen, pine, spruce, aspen, the conifer, fir, and others (Waring, 2002).

References

Kelly. N.D. The Coniferous Forest. Retrieved from http://kellyspage11.tripod.com/

Waring, R. (2002). Temperate Coniferous Forests. Retrieved from http://www.fsl.orst.edu/~waring/Publications/pdf/TempForestEncyc.pdf