Chaparral

By Matt Razor and Courtney Norris

Climate

• During the summer it is very hot and dry. The temperature is usually mild but it can get very hot or nearly freezing. The temperature range is between 30° and 100° F.

• This biome only gets about 10-17 inches of rain all year, and most of it comes in the winter.

• Chaparrals can be found from 30° to 50° N and 30° to 40° S latitudes.

Climotogram

Soil

• The soil in the chaparral biome is very nutrient poor.

• Chaparral can grow in this desert-like soil when most plants cannot. Chaparral plants take over and dominate these spaces before anything else can grow.

Producers• Plants to survive in the chaparral need to be well adapted to the varying

temperatures, poor soil, and lack of moisture in the chaparral. Many plants are drought and fire resistant to cope with the climate.

• The most common type of chaparral contains plants like large shrubs, corn oak, and scattered scrub that are densely packed together.

• Blue Oak, Coyote Brush, Common Sagebrush, Fairy Duster, French Broom, King Protea, Lebanon Cedar, Manzanita, Mountain Mahogany, Saltmarsh Bird's Beak, Olive Tree, Torrey Pine

Plants

Consumers

• Has a vide variety of different producers.

• The animals are all mainly grassland and desert types adapted to hot, dry weather. A few examples: coyotes, jack rabbits, mule deer, alligator lizards, horned toads, praying mantis, honey bee and ladybugs.

Consumer Pictures

Unique Qualities

• The chaparral biome has many different types of terrain. Some examples are flat plains, rocky hills and mountain slopes. It is sometimes used in movies for the "Wild West".

• Because the chaparral contains patches of other biomes in it, it also shares some of the same animals that the other biomes do.

• Chaparral plants take over and dominate spaces before anything else can grow.

• Most chaparral areas formed where humans once destroyed

forests and ruined soil.

Unique Quality…..

Human Affects• Most chaparral areas formed where humans once destroyed forests and

ruined soil. Because these forests could not regrow in the nutrient poor soil, chaparral plants took over.

• Machia is is a vegetation that grows in areas like the Chaparral.• Most of the Macchia was formed this way. • It later took over inland regions and mountain slopes only after forests

were destroyed by humans. More than 3,000 years ago as the Mediterranean became more populated, people started rapidly cutting down forests to use the land for grazing their animals.

• The land was eventually over-grazed the soil lost all of its nutrients. With no plants left to hold the soil together, it was easily eroded away by wind and rain. This was when the Macchia took over the thin, almost desert-like soil. Succession caused by humans put the Macchia right into the climax stage, where it thrives today.

THE END