Page 327 - Environment: The Science Behind the Stories

FSC certification for the paper in your textbook was Many kinds of forests exist
made possible because Pearson Education, the publisher of
this book, is striving to follow sustainable practices. Pearson Most of the world’s forests occur as boreal forest (p. 117), a
supported FSC paper for this book at the request of your biome that stretches across much of Canada, Scandinavia, and
authors and editors because our entire team feels that an Russia; or as tropical rainforest (p. 114), a biome that occurs
environmental science textbook should walk its talk. So, as in Central America, Indonesia, Southeast Asia, northern South
you flip through this book, you can feel satisfied that you are America, and equatorial Africa. Temperate deciduous forests
doing a small part to help safeguard the world’s forests by (p. 113), temperate rainforests (p. 114), and tropical dry for-
supporting sustainable forestry practices. ests (p. 115) also cover large regions of the globe.
Within each forest biome, the nature of the plant commu-
nity varies from region to region because of differences in soil
and climate. As a result, ecologists and forest managers find it
useful to classify forests into forest types, categories defined by
Forest Ecosystems and their predominant tree species (FIGURE 12.1). The eastern United
States contains 10 forest types, ranging from spruce-fir to oak-
Forest Resources hickory to longleaf–slash pine. The western United States holds
13 forest types, ranging from Douglas fir and hemlock–sitka
A forest is any ecosystem with a high density of trees. Forests spruce forests of the moist Pacific Northwest to ponderosa pine
provide habitat for countless organisms; help maintain the and pinyon-juniper woodlands of the drier interior.
quality of soil, air, and water; and play key roles in our plan- Michigan’s Upper Peninsula holds a diverse mix of for-
et’s biogeochemical cycles (pp. 135–146). Forests have also est types because it lies where the temperate deciduous forest
long provided humanity with wood for fuel, construction, biome of the eastern United States merges into the boreal for-
paper production, and more. est of Canada. In the region surrounding Escanaba, spruce-fir

(a) Maple-beech-birch forest, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (b) Oak-hickory forest, West Virginia

(c) Ponderosa pine forest, northern Arizona (d) Redwood forest, coastal northern California
326 FIGURE 12.1 Shown are four of the 23 forest types found in the continental United States.

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