Biomes - Marine and Tropical Rainforest

Biomes- Marine and Tropical Rainforest

The world is full of many different biomes. The ones I am most fascinated by are the tropical rainforest biome and the marine biome. Each is interesting in its own way. I have decided to narrow the marine biome down and focus on the Pacific Ocean. I am interested to see how these two compare and contrast.

Although it may seem that our climate does not affect the marine biome, it does. During El Nino, the trade winds slacken and sometimes even change direction. This change in our climate affects the southern pacific ocean greatly. A big pocket of hot water moves from the eastern coast of Australia to the western coast of South America. This is just one example of how our climate affects this biome. The marine biome affects our climate as well. So much water is evaporated from this biome. This means that the earth will experience enough rain for crops to grow. It also provides wind to help circulate the air around us and it affects temperatures around the coast. The temperature of the open water depends on the temperature of the area around it, but the average temperature is around 70 to 80 degrees F. The tropical rainforest is very important to the earth. They help maintain global weather habits and the rain. The weather is normally lush and warm all year and the temperature rarely changes from day to night. The average temperature ranges from 70 to 85 degrees F. The average amount of rainfall each year is 200 cm and it is usually extremely humid. These two biomes are very similar in climate. Each is wet and gets rainfall. Also, both climates are able to support life and great amounts of growth. The only difference is one is underwater and the temperature will vary more than the tropical rainforest.

The Pacific Ocean is the world’s largest ocean, which covers about one-third of the Earth’s exterior. According to the book Oceans (Hutchinson, 2005) this ocean has the greatest average depth of 13,127 feet and also has the deepest point in the ocean, which is 36,184 feet. Like every ocean, it has a photic zone and an aphotic zone. The photic zone is the area of an ocean that is shallow enough for sunlight to penetrate through the water. The aphotic zone is the darkest, deepest area of the ocean. This is how marine biologists separate this marine biome. Normally, the photic zone water is warmer and the aphotic zone is colder. There are two reasons for this. One is because the sunlight is able to go through the water in the photic zone, heating the water. The sunlight can’t reach the water in the aphotic zone so it says cold. The other reason is because cold water sinks and hot or warm water rises. Like all oceans, it is able to support many plants and sea creatures. From coral reefs, to the deep caves, all of the animals have a habitat. The tropical rainforest has so many types of animals and plants. Its habitat is very interesting too. There