The two cold high-latitude biomes of the Northern Hemisphere: the treeless tundra of the Arctic margins and the taiga (boreal coniferous forest) lying just to its south.
- Tundra lies along the Arctic fringe of North America, Europe, and Asia (and on high mountains as alpine tundra); winters are long and bitterly cold, summers are short and cool.
- The tundra is treeless, with mosses, lichens, sedges, and dwarf shrubs growing over permafrost (permanently frozen subsoil); animals include reindeer, caribou, Arctic fox, and polar bear.
- The taiga (boreal forest) is a broad belt of coniferous evergreen forest (pine, spruce, fir, larch) south of the tundra across Canada, Scandinavia, and Siberia, the largest forest belt on Earth.
- Conifers are adapted to cold with needle-shaped leaves, conical shape (sheds snow), and thick bark; they are softwoods used for timber, pulp, and paper.
- Both biomes are sparsely populated; the taiga is economically important for softwood timber, while thawing tundra permafrost is a major climate-change concern (release of stored carbon and methane).
The tundra-versus-taiga distinction (treeless cold desert versus coniferous forest), the permafrost, the softwood economy, and the climate-change permafrost concern are recurring world-biome facts.
Tundra is treeless with permafrost; taiga (boreal forest) is dense coniferous softwood forest just to its south. Both are Northern Hemisphere biomes; the Southern Hemisphere has little land at these latitudes, so no comparable belts.
Cold Northern biomes: treeless permafrost tundra at the Arctic fringe, coniferous softwood taiga (boreal forest) just south of it.