boreal forest (conifers); temperate forest (hardwoods or mixed hardwoods and conifers); tropical forest; desert; the alpine zone; grassland; tundra; and chaparral, sometimes called shrubland
these are the principal Terran biomes
cities; villages; croplands; rangelands; forests; and wildlands
these are the principal Terran human-use patterns anthromes
mix and match the above, and you get the 825 eco-regions of Earth
450 on land, 229 marine
65 percent of these now exist only off-planet
take an x-y graph to chart a Whittaker biome diagram, with precipitation marked vertically and temperature horizontally. Biomes can be plotted on this graph and will make a clearly shaped map of what kind of biome turns up in what kind of conditions. Left is hotter, right colder; wet is higher, dry lower; and thus the most general version is as follows:
Tropical rain forest
Tropical seasonal forest
Temperate rain forest
Savanna
Temperate deciduous forest
Taiga
Subtropical desert
Temperate grassland
desert Tundra
The classifications can be much elaborated. The 450 named terrestrial eco-regions divide biomes by not only precipitation and temperature, but also combinations of latitude, altitude, geography, geology, and other factors
eco-regions themselves can be usefully divided into microenvironments as small as a hectare
34,850 known species went extinct between 1900 and 2100. It was, and remains ongoing, the sixth great mass extinction in Earth’s history
no extinctions from this point onward are inevitable (this has always been true, however)
19,340 terraria are known to exist in the solar system. Approximately 70 percent of these function as zoo worlds, either dedicated to sustaining an eco-region’s suite of animals and plants, or else to creating new combinations of suites, called Ascensions
92 percent of mammal species are now endangered or gone entirely from Earth and live mainly in their off-planet terraria
space: the zoo, the
inoculant