Marine Biome Research Paper

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 are three sections of its habitat. The first is the canopy. This area is the level where the treetops join and come together. Heavy rainfall normally drenches the canopy. Sometimes the trees even turn their leaves as the sun moves,
because they need sunlight to make seeds and more leaves. The canopy holds many animals. Some don't even come down to the ground. Moss and algae also strive with all of the rain. It coats most branches and sometimes grows on the leaves. But if the moss got too thick on the leaves, they would not be able to grab sunlight and they would die. To prevent this, they have a waxy coating on their surface so it is more difficult for moss and algae to grow. The next section down is the understory. This part is between the canopy and the forest floor. There is barely any sunlight so the plants have to use it as best as they can. There is less plant life and animals in this section. The last section is the ground level, or forest floor. Almost no light reaches the floor because of the big leaves and branches of the trees. This means that very few plants live here. The soil is lacking in nutrients, so the trees do not put their roots down far into the ground. Instead they send their roots along or right beneath the ground. The roots suck the nutrients from the rotting leaves. These dead leaves are called leaf litter. Without the deep roots, most trees would not be stable and fall, but the rain forest trees are held up by supporting buttress roots. They grow out from their trunks. These buttress roots can begin at about 15 feet above the ground and extend all the way back to the floor. What I thought was really interesting was that the trees produce seeds with enough food inside for their saplings to reach three feel or more. After the food runs out, the sapling may not grow for a long time. It will have to wait until a near by tree falls and dies to open up space for it to grow into the canopy. These are the main habitats of the life in the tropical rainforest.