2 World biomes

Before you start

Main focus

To look at the different world environments on a global and Australian scale, geographers combine ecosystems into larger areas known as biomes.

Why it’s relevant to us

People have adapted to living in different biomes and biomes have been altered, for better or for worse, by humans. The sale of Australia’s resources is a major source of income for the nation, but it comes at a cost to the country’s biomes.

Inquiry questions
  • What are the world’s major biomes?
  • What are the characteristics of these biomes?
  • What physical factors affect the location of biomes?
  • How do plants and animals interact in biomes?
  • How have humans impacted on biomes?
  • What are Australia’s biomes?
Key terms
  • Aspect
  • Biome
  • Coniferous
  • Desert
  • Ocean current
  • Orographic rainfall
  • Rainforest
  • Savanna
  • Xeric
  • Zonation

Let’s begin

The word ‘biome’ refers to groupings of plant and animal communities which have adapted to inhabit particular parts of the Earth’s surface.

Before the domestication of plants and animals, the main thing biomes had to adapt to was the world’s changing climate. In recent times, biomes have had to adapt not only to a changing climate but also to human interference.

It may be difficult to believe, but the current pattern of the world’s biomes is not the pattern which was evident even as recently as 15 000 years ago, when most of Canada, and Central Park in New York, for example, were covered by an ice sheet hundreds of metres thick.

Australia has developed a unique set of biomes because of its isolation from other continents for millions of years. As the Australian continent has drifted northwards over these millions of years, the flora and fauna which make up the biomes have adapted to the changing environment.

At times large parts of the current continent were the floors of shallow seas, and at times the climate was very different. A completely different set of biomes existed in places that are now desert or semi-desert.