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Habitats Home page

What is a habitat?

Wheat Crop
A Birch Wood

Rather than link lessons to habitats, we decided to provide a sample of various habitats which you could then choose as appropriate for your class and location.

The Earth's entire living environment which can support life is called the BIOSPHERE. The limits to the places where life is found on Earth stretch from 9000m up where springtails can be found feeding on pollen and seeds blown by the wind. To several 100m below the sea where organisms can be found existing on chemcial energy from deep sea vents.

Within this BIOSPHERE are several large categories of living communities known as BIOMES that are usually characterizied by their dominant vegetation, such as grasslands, tropical forests, or deserts.

The biomes are in turn made up of ECOSYSTEMS. The living or BIOTIC, parts of an ecosystem, such as the plants, animals, and bacteria, are known as a community. The physical surroundings, or ABIOTIC components, such as the minerals found in the soil, are known as the environment or HABITAT

Videos of habitats

So a habitat is the particular type of area in which an animal or plant lives.

Habitats can be considered on various scales:

  • Habitat - is a wood for example

  • Mini-Habitat - a particluar area in a wood, such as the canopy layer, or field layer or a single oak tree in a wood

  • Micro-Habitat - under the bark of a tree, or in its leaves

These definitions are not definitive and really depend on indivudual definitions and what creatures are being studied and the appropriate scale. It is not much point talking about an Ecosystem if you are just looking at what lives in the leaves of a single tree - although this study would have links to the whole ecosystem.

Teachers Guide / Ideas.

Rather than try and link the lessons to habitats we thought it was best to provide some smaple habitats which you can then choose to best suit your school and class. We have tried to make these as varied as possible and also vary the scale from 'full' habitats to mini-habitats and then micro-habitats.

Each page contains:

  • A short video of the habitat for you to show your class either as an exmaple of a different habitat or one you will visit.

  • A video showing some of the sample organisms which maybe found in the particular habitat.

  • Any background information or knowledge we have of a particular habitat to try and put it into the context of the countryside as a whole.

The habitats covered so far are:

  • Woodland

  • Grassland

  • Ponds

And of course we will try to meet requests......

 

 

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