50 Fun Facts About Tundra

What prevents trees from growing in a tundra?

Tundra vegetation is limited to dwarf shrubs, sedges, grasses, mosses and lichens.

From which language does the word 'tundra' come?

It may ultimately derive from a Sámi word for a treeless upland or marshy plain.

Which three regions and types of tundra are recognised?

Alpine tundra can occur on high mountains at any latitude.

What is the name for the boundary between tundra and forest?

It is also called the timberline.

In which year did the word tundra first appear in English, spelled 'toundra'?

The French-looking spelling suggests it may have been borrowed via French.

Arctic tundra lies north of which forest belt?

The Arctic tundra covers vast areas of northern Russia and Canada.

What is the approximate average winter temperature on the Arctic tundra?

Surprisingly, the very lowest temperatures in Russia, Canada and Alaska were recorded further south, in the forest zone.

Roughly how much precipitation does Arctic tundra receive per year, qualifying it as a polar desert?

Because evaporation is so low, the ground still turns to marsh and bog in summer.

How many species of land mammals live in the tundra, according to standard biodiversity counts?

There are about 1,700 vascular plant species, though millions of birds migrate to the marshes each year.

Which class of cold-blooded animals is almost entirely absent from the tundra?

The mosquito, by contrast, is one of its most notorious residents.

Labrador tea, a notable Arctic tundra plant, belongs to which genus?

Blueberry, crowberry and reindeer lichen grow alongside it.

Which region of Siberia, largely tundra, produces about 90% of the country's natural gas?

Tundra regions are often rich in petroleum, gas and uranium despite seeing little human activity.

Which two peoples of the Siberian permafrost tundra are mostly nomadic reindeer herders?

The Sámi herd reindeer further west, in Sápmi.

Under the Köppen climate system, what code denotes a tundra climate?

At least one month averages above freezing but none gets warm enough for trees.

Above what monthly average temperature does a climate stop counting as tundra under the Köppen system?

That warm-summer limit roughly matches the poleward limit of trees.

How many flowering plant species grow on the Antarctic continent?

Antarctic hair grass and Antarctic pearlwort grow on the Antarctic Peninsula.

Why does the Antarctic tundra lack large land mammals, unlike the Arctic?

Seals and penguins use the shore, and rabbits and cats have been introduced to some subantarctic islands.

What is the name for the stunted, wind-twisted forest found at the edge of alpine tundra?

The German word describes the crooked wood of the forest-tundra ecotone.

At its upper edge, alpine tundra ends at which boundary?

Above it, snow and ice persist right through the summer.

For how long must ground stay below 0 °C to count as permafrost?

The oldest permafrost has been continuously frozen for around 700,000 years.

Roughly what share of the exposed land surface of the Northern Hemisphere is underlain by permafrost?

That is about 18 million square kilometres, including much of Alaska, Canada, Greenland and Siberia.

The deepest permafrost extends to greater than what depth?

The shallowest is less than a metre thick.

What is the name for the seasonally thawing ground above permafrost in which plant roots can grow?

Plant roots can only take hold in this seasonally thawed soil.

Which two large cities are the only ones in the world built on continuous permafrost?

Both are in Russia, and buildings there stand on piles so their heat does not thaw the ground.

What are the large ice-cored mounds, up to 70 m high, that form in permafrost regions called?

Smaller peat mounds of the same kind are called palsas.

Which two greenhouse gases are released when thawing permafrost lets ancient biomass decompose?

The emissions are a climate feedback loop, though not thought large enough to cause runaway warming.

The muskox is most closely related to which animals?

Its genus name Ovibos means sheep-ox in Latin.

What does the muskox's Inuktitut name, umingmak, mean?

Its English name comes from the strong odour males emit during the rut.

Muskoxen introduced to which European country wandered over the border to found a small herd in Sweden?

They were also reintroduced to Alaska, Yukon and Siberia after dying out there.

The Arctic fox's tail is roughly what fraction of its body length?

Its fur provides the best insulation of any mammal, and the winter coat is twice the length of the summer coat.

What is the maximum litter size recorded for the Arctic fox, the largest in the order Carnivora?

Litter sizes track the lemming population, which peaks every three to five years.

The blue colour morph of the Arctic fox is most common in which country?

Worldwide about 90% of Arctic foxes are the white morph.

Reindeer are unique among deer for what reason?

They are also the only deer to have been semi-domesticated on a large scale.

According to the US FDA, what is a wild Rangifer tarandus called in North American English?

The same animal is a reindeer if domesticated.

Which herd of Siberian tundra reindeer is the largest wild herd in the world?

It varies between 400,000 and a million animals.

Which is the smallest subspecies of reindeer?

Osborn's, of North America, is the largest.

Lemmings, voles and muskrats together make up which rodent subfamily?

They are the primary prey for most Arctic carnivores.

Which 1958 Disney film faked footage of lemmings leaping off a cliff, cementing the mass-suicide myth?

Producers threw the animals off a cliff; the film still won the Oscar for Documentary Feature.

Which predator's numbers may drive lemming population cycles more than the lemmings themselves?

Lemmings stay active all winter in tunnel systems under the snow.

What is unusual about the snowy owl's daily habits compared with most owls?

Its breeding success is closely tied to the abundance of tundra lemmings.

The snowy owl's species name scandiacus means 'of' which place?

Linnaeus described it in 1758 as Strix scandiaca.

The snowy owl is the only owl with what characteristic?

Males are purer white while females carry more dark brown flecks.

How fast can an Arctic hare run?

Fat makes up close to 20% of its body and it digs holes under the snow to keep warm.

The ptarmigan's genus name Lagopus means 'hare-foot' in Greek, referring to what?

The English name comes from Scottish Gaelic tarmachan, meaning croaker; the silent p was added by mistake.

Where does the silent 'p' at the start of 'ptarmigan' come from?

The Gaelic tarmachan means croaker, after the bird's frog-like call.

What is the pale colour of the ptarmigan's winter plumage useful for?

Even their flight feathers are white, which is rare because melanin makes feathers stronger.

How large an area of Alaskan tundra burned in a single 2007 wildfire north of the Brooks Range?

Tundra fires both result from and contribute to global warming.

Research in Alaska found tundra wildfires typically return to a site every how many years?

Drier lowland areas burn more often than wetter highland areas, following a natural cycle of fuel build-up and fire.

Roughly how many species of vascular plants are found across the tundra biome?

Biodiversity is low, yet millions of birds still migrate to tundra marshes every year to breed.

Which bird, named for royalty, is endemic to the Antipodes Subantarctic Islands tundra?

The ecoregion, which includes Macquarie and the Auckland Islands, also hosts the only two subantarctic orchids and the Antipodean albatross.