Grassland Ecosystem

A biome is a huge, unique complex of plant communities made and asserted by climate. A huge number of climatic factors relate in the maintenance and creation of a biome.

The significance of biomes cannot be overestimated. Biomes have changed and continued many times during the history of life on the Earth.

This phenomenon of change is is still an on going process. These changes over the years have been natural.

But now in the present industrial age, we have to accept that our activities are altering these natural changes.

The world's ecosystems are now being change forcibly. This is a matter of real concern for us now. However we must first be aware of how our natural biomes work.

A significant classification of biomes is: Marine biomes, Land biomes and Freshwater biomes.

The important plants of grassland are obviously grasses, with small low shrubs and some special trees. Trees are more frequently found near streams and rivers, in grasslands. There are numerous wildflowers that grow up in grasslands.

Grasslands are defined as lands prevailed by grasses instead than big trees and shrubs. Early forests turned down and grasslands became distributed.

There are two major classifications of grasslands:

• Tropical grasslands are those grasslands that are nearest to the equator. They are very hot or warm throughout the year. 
• Temperate grasslands are those far away from the equator, with rough winters and hot summers. 

• Mixed grasslands 
  They have grasses that grow up around 50-80 cm high and about 30-50 cm of rain per year.
• Short grasslands 
  They have short type of grasses and get very little rainfall per year, less than 20 cm.

Grassland biomes are unchanged areas of land where grass is the dominating plant life, as conflicted to some other terrestrial biomes where big trees invade most of the surface of the land.

Grassland is found out around the world and has helped as grazing areas for a huge number of animals.

Grassland biomes are constituted of large, rolling tracts of land consisting of grasses, flowers, shrubs and herbs. The yearly rainfall they encounter is between 15-35 inches.

If they receive more rainfall, they would become forestlands, and if receive less rain would turn into desert areas. In fact, Grassland biomes are normally regions that are a modulation between the forest and the desert.

Usually, in grassland biomes shrubs and herbs do not grow, although tall trees only grow in river and stream basins. The most outstanding feature of grassland biomes are its stability and openness, approximately seeming like an infinite sea of grass.

As the soil in grassland biomes are prosperous in nutrients, when they are transformed to agricultural purposes they show to be very fertile.

A part from the grasslands of South America, there are some other grassland biomes in the other regions of the world.

For example, the South America’s grasslands are called “Pampas”, and it is called the “Serengeti” in Africa.

There is also a huge area of grassland that stretches out from Siberia to Ukraine, which has a very rough and wintry climate, given that there is no ocean or river nearby, and there are also no mountains in the locality to block the arctic or cold winds.This grassland biome is known as the Russian steppes and Asian.

Grassland Animals

Grasslands biomes in the world are home to different kinds of animal life that can live in these biomes.

All grasslands have the same characteristics of having abundance of grass as food and missing cover from vultures.

Therefore, the kinds of animals that live in the grasslands around the world are common, being mainly plant eating, which are animals that have long hooves and legs just like horses and deer, which allow them to get away from their predators.

Grassland Plants

Trees, herbs and shrubs occur very hardly ever in this grassland biome. There are various types of grasses that mainly grow up in the grassland biome, such as ryegrass, foxtail, wild oats, buffalo grass and purple needle grass.

Even though animals feed on these types of grasses, they can endure because the growth point of the grasses is very close to the ground surface. In addition, they endure even fires due to the underground stems and buds.

The trees, herbs and shrubs that grow up in the grassland biome, on the other side, are very easily ruined in fires. There are also various types of wildflowers that grow up in temperate grasslands, like clovers, goldenrods, sunflowers, and asters etc.