What Are Habitats A habitat is a place where an animal or plant lives There are many different kinds of habitat A river is one kind of habitat while a desert is another kind Shaping a Habitat What a habitat is like depends partly on the climate the average weather in the area over a long period of time In a desert it rarely rains while in rain forests it rains a lot of the time The kind of rocks and landscape also affect the habitat and so do living things A forest would not be a forest without trees The Biggest Habitats Some habitats cover large areas Oceans cover two-thirds of the earth’s surface while conifer forests cover a little over one-tenth of the land area These large habitats are known as biomes 쑼 A map of the world’s biomes The largest is the water biome that includes rivers lakes and oceans The world’s major biome zones 4 Desert Taiga Mountain Temperate forest Polar desert Temperate grassland Savanna Tropical forest Shrubland Tundra
쑿 Monument Valley in Utah is an example of a desert habitat It is very dry with little plant life Each biome can be split into smaller and smaller habitats For insects the forest floor is a very different habitat from a leafy treetop In this book you will discover all kinds of habitats from rotting logs to the wide oceans You will also learn how human beings affect habitats and the living things in them 1 2 3 MEASURING RAINFALL Measure the rainfall in a local habitat for one month The amount of rainfall affects what the habitat is like You will need a small plastic bottle some marbles some water a permanent marker a ruler a pen a notebook 1 Ask an adult to cut the top off the bottle Put a layer of marbles in the bottom to weight it down 2 Turn the top upside down and push it into the bottle This will cut down on water loss through evaporation Add water to just cover the marbles Mark the water level with the marker 3 Put the bottle outside in an open area After a day use the ruler to measure from the mark to the level of the water This is the rainfall for that day Write it down 4 Pour out the water but not the marbles and then fill up the bottle to the mark again The next day measure from the mark to the water level again 5 Repeat for the rest of the month then add up your figures How much rain fell 5
