Definition: An area that is inundated or saturated by surface or ground water at a frequency and duration sufficient to support, and that under normal circumstances do support, a prevalence of vegetation typically adapted for life in saturated soil conditions.
Definition: A tract of crop or grazing land, as well as the group of buildings with and often surrounding a farmhouse, including barns, sheds, and other outbuildings, used for agricultural production.
Definition: An intentional planting of a crop, on a large scale, usually for uses other than cereal production or pasture. The term is currently most often used for plantings of trees and shrubs. The term tends also to be used for plantings maintained on economic bases other than that of subsistence farming.
Comment: "Small" is ambiguous. For details on "Small rivers" (e.g. the Salween river) see http://worldwildlife.org/biomes/small-river-ecosystems. This class will be replaced with a less ambiguous class.
Definition: A group of hydrous aluminium phyllosilicate (phyllosilicates being a subgroup of silicate minerals) minerals (see clay minerals), that are typically less than 2micrometres in diameter. Clay consists of a variety of phyllosilicate minerals rich in silicon and aluminium oxides and hydroxides which include variable amounts of structural water.
Definition: A wetland, featuring grasses, rushes, reeds, typhas, sedges, and other herbaceous plants (possibly with low-growing woody plants) in a context of shallow water.
Definition: A wetland that features permanent inundation of large areas of land by shallow bodies of water, generally with a substantial number of hummocks, or dry-land protrusions.
Definition: A wetland that features permanent inundation of large areas of land by shallow bodies of water, generally with a substantial number of hummocks, or dry-land protrusions.
Definition: Expressions of the estuarine biome occur at wide lower courses of a rivers where they flow into a sea. Estuaries experience tidal flows and their water is a changing mixture of fresh and salt.
Definition: A desert biome is a terrestrial biome which loses more liquid water by evapotranspiration than is supplied by precipitation and includes communities adapted to these conditions.
Definition: A wetland, featuring grasses, rushes, reeds, typhas, sedges, and other herbaceous plants (possibly with low-growing woody plants) in a context of shallow water.
Definition: An aquatic biome that comprises systems of open-ocean and unprotected coastal habitats, characterized by exposure to wave action, tidal fluctuation, and ocean currents as well as systems that largely resemble these. Water in the marine biome is generally within the salinity range of seawater: 30 to 38 ppt.
Comment: "Large" is ambiguous. For details on "Large rivers" (e.g. the Mekong river) see http://worldwildlife.org/biomes/large-river-ecosystems This class will be replaced with a less ambiguous class.
Definition: A forest biome is a terrestrial biome which includes, across its entire spatial extent, densely packed vegetation which strongly limits light penetration to the forest floor.
Definition: A habitat that is in or on a body of water containing low concentrations of dissolved salts and other total dissolved solids (<0.5 grams dissolved salts per litre).