There’s pockets of trees :) Little north American savannahs! And riparian corridors through them. And playa lakes.
I get it, personal preferences. But I just love the plains and I can’t fathom them being boring. Stark, extreme, austere…
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I have to say reading all these responses gives me hope for the world after all. You guys are all great!!!
For me it’s probably the Sonoran Desert, but that may be because it’s winter now. I like to move up and down the elevations with the seasons. The nearshore of the Red Sea is pretty amazing, always something to surprise. The most spiritual is East Greenland. One day you are watching miles of sea ice rise and fall with the swells in the warm sunlight and the next day there’s hurricane winds and you are crawling to safety hoping to survive. But a summer thunderstorm in the Sonoran Desert is pretty spiritual too!
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and you have the superbloom (as we can do in Namaqualand)
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I am usually drawn to the alpine areas with their wealth of woody shrubs, herbaceous plants, grasses and small mammals that try to survive in such windy and cold climates. The diversity of plant morphologic types and sparsity of arthropods makes me wonder how this ecosystem functions during and after its brief summer and how it is affected by changing climates. I grew up at sea level surrounded by rivers and near an ocean.
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I will say there are quite a few neat little burrowing mammals on the plains. I like the prairie dogs, especially (there’s a prairie dog town near where my grandpa lives), but unfortunately I don’t fit in the tunnels and just seeing the holes aboveground is not as interesting as being able to see them in their habitat (I like those cross-sectional burrows you see at zoos sometimes for that reason). That’s more on the small scale rather than a reason to like the whole biome, though.
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At least in Canada, zero-till has become ‘a thing’. It’s partly economic - ploughing up a field costs money. But I also feel that most large and small farmers believe the soil needs to be preserved. Monoculture crops are not ideal, but things do live in them (pests!), and part of the reason for them is that consumers demand cheap food. Farmers see a small portion of, say, the price of a loaf of bread.
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I spent a couple of months in Mexico, mainly DF, but got out to places like Cuetzalan in Eastern Puebla, and into Hidalgo. It was like I had to throw out everything I had learned about landscape. Rounded valleys in Canada mean glaciation, but not in Mexico. In a day we would go from cool rainforest/cloud forest, to plains with cacti. I saw very little wildlife, not even road kill. It was a very interesting place to be, but really threw this prairie boy for a loop!
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I live in Texas and I’d have to say it’s the hardwood bottomland. I love the cypress trees, Spanish moss, alligators, wild orchids, etc. Unfortunately, there is very little of it left. The local politicians think any “undeveloped” land is “a waste of space” because “nature doesn’t pay taxes.” So they will bring in land developers to put something there just to be putting something there. You can drive through one of the local towns and see weird things like a dollar store across the street from another dollar store because MUST DEVELOP EVERYTHING! The locals complain about the government building unwanted crap everywhere, but no one listens.
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I grew up in Papua new guinea, so I saw a lot of the rainforests and savannas there. If I could, I would go back there with the sole purpose of finding animals, now that I know so much more and am independent enough to. I would love to have a job like Mark O’shea- I think the work he did was amazing.
I love all the biomes here in Australia. I find it fascinating how many species can survive in the desert where they get only a few ml of rain a year.
I love the jarrah and karri forests of the south west, and the many birds, mammals and reptiles that hide there.
My favourite biome, however, are the coastal swamps where I live. It may sound weird, but there are more snakes in one acre of swamp than a square km of normal farmland, and i also enjoy the many bird and frog species I encounter along the way
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I think my favorite Ecosystem is oregon rainforests I just find them breathtaking and full of life. Its amazing trees grow moss grows on the trees and licorice fern grows on the moss on the trees its just so cool. I find all of the plant life amazing and many of the forests are also loaded with amphibians. many of them also have creeks running through them as if the forest itself wasent cool enough.
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I like all parts of Southern Western Ghats but mainly High altitude sholas with grasslands and the Myristica swamps. There are lots of endemic species including the ones which are found in small areas and in a specific habitat. I’ve been to both the habitats but I was a small kid when I went to areas with Shola and was only a birder with no interest in other organisms when I went to Myristica Swamps. I like places with lots of rain and enjoy walking in the rain. I’ve trekked during rain through the forests of Western Ghats. Once in 2018 at Periyar Tiger Reserve(It was for a few minutes only) then in 2019 at Shendurney Wildlife Sanctuary during the Wet Season of the Kerala Bird Atlas(It was continuously raining for days) and in 2019 itself at the Reservoir in Parambikulam Tiger Reserve during the same time as said before(Actually I was on a boat). During rain it is tough with lots of leeches but is very beautiful. I like Western Ghats because there is a lot of ecotones. I’ll go there this year after I finish 10th(If Corona is controlled by then). I also like the Vembanad lake region(from where I am from) which is below sea level with lots of migratory birds and fishes with some fragmented mangroves and lots of paddy fields. I also like beaches as I currently live near the coast. But the beaches nearby are full of people but there are still some places with many gulls and terns. The good thing for me is that all these places are easily accessible from where I live. Read about Sholas and Myristica Swamps with this link to Wikipedia
Sholas- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shola
Myristica Swamps- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myristica_swamp
Parambikulam before the rain.
Periyar before the rain.
Shendurney during the trek (it was still raining but lightly)
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I love lakes because they are stunningly eerie when flooded!
They are also great for biodiversity!
… and many more.
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In Southern California we do! But it is based on just the right pattern of rainfall, so it’s only every few years or so.
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