Temperate rainforests are rainforests with coniferous or broadleaf forests that occur in the temperate zone and receive heavy rain.
Temperate rainforests occur in oceanic moist regions around the world: the Pacific temperate rainforests of North American Pacific Northwest as well as the Appalachian temperate rainforest of the Eastern U.S. Sun Belt; the Valdivian temperate rainforests of southwestern South America; the rainforests of New Zealand and southeastern Australia; northwest Europe (small pockets in Great Britain and larger areas in Ireland, southern Norway and northern Iberia); southern Japan; the Black Sea–Caspian Sea region from the southeasternmost coastal zone of the Bulgarian coast, through Turkey, to Georgia, and northern Iran.
The moist conditions of temperate rainforests generally support an understory of mosses, ferns and some shrubs and berries. Temperate rainforests can be temperate coniferous forests or temperate broadleaf and mixed forests.
For temperate rainforests of North America, Alaback's definition is widely recognized:
Annual precipitation over (KJ)
Mean annual temperature is between 4 and 12 °C (39 and 54 °F).
However, required annual precipitation depends on factors such as distribution of rain over the year, temperatures over the year and fog presence, and definitions in other regions of the world differ considerably. For example, Australian definitions are ecological-structural rather than climatic:
Closed canopy of trees excludes at least 69% of the sky.
Forest is composed mainly of tree species which do not require fire for regeneration, but with seedlings able to regenerate under shade and in natural openings.
The latter would, for example, exclude a part of the temperate rainforests of western North America, as Coast Douglas-fir, one of its dominant tree species, requires stand-destroying disturbance to initiate a new cohort of seedlings. The North American definition would in turn exclude a part of temperate rainforests under definitions used elsewhere.
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.
An old-growth forest, sometimes synonymous with primary forest, virgin forest, late seral forest, primeval forest, first-growth forest, or mature forestis a forest that has attained great age without significant disturbance, and thereby exhibits unique ecological features, and might be classified as a climax community. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations defines primary forests as naturally regenerated forests of native tree species where there are no clearly visible indications of human activity and the ecological processes are not significantly disturbed.
The Valdivian temperate forests (NT0404) is an ecoregion on the west coast of southern South America, in Chile and Argentina. It is part of the Neotropical realm. The forests are named after the city of Valdivia. The Valdivian temperate rainforests are characterized by their dense understories of bamboos, ferns, and for being mostly dominated by evergreen angiosperm trees with some deciduous specimens, though conifer trees are also common.
Temperate rainforests are rainforests with coniferous or broadleaf forests that occur in the temperate zone and receive heavy rain. Temperate rainforests occur in oceanic moist regions around the world: the Pacific temperate rainforests of North American Pacific Northwest as well as the Appalachian temperate rainforest of the Eastern U.S.
Since a few decades, the balance of the nitrogen (N) cycle has been deeply disturbed by human activies. The global impact of these activities on the N cycle can be described as a doubling of the trans
Nitrogen (N) from atmospheric deposition has been shown to be mainly retained in the organic soil layers of temperate forest ecosystems, but the mechanisms and the physico-chemical fractions involved
2010
, ,
In temperate forest ecosystems, soil acts as a major sink for atmospheric N deposition. A 15N labeling experiment in a hardwood forest on calcareous fluvisol was performed to study the processes invol