The 10th episode of the Planet Earth DVD series surveys the coniferous and deciduous seasonal woodland habitats, the most extensive forests on Earth. Coniferous trees begin sparsely in the Arctic but soon dominate the land, and the taiga circles the globe, containing a third of all the Earth’s trees. The Arctic is an unforgiving climate, and few creatures can survive the cold, but the moose and wolverine are exceptions.
1600 kilometers to the south, on the Pacific coast of North America, conifers have reached their full potential. Some of the world’s tallest trees reside here; the redwoods. Planet Earth shows a pine marten stalking a squirrel and great grey owl chicks take their first flight. Further south still, in the Valdivian forests of Chile, a population of smaller animals exists, including the pudu and the kodkod.
During the spring in the European broad-leaved forests, a mandarin duck leads its day-old family to leap from its tree trunk nest to the leaf litter below. Meanwhile, on a beautiful summer night on North America’s east coast, periodical cicadas emerge en masse to mate, an astonishing event that only occurs every seventeen years.
After revisiting Russia’s Amur leopards in winter, Planet Earth shows a timelapse sequence illustrating the effect of the ensuing spring on the deciduous forest floor. In India’s teak forests, a langur monkey strays too far from the chital that act as its sentinels and falls prey to a tiger.
1600 kilometers to the south, on the Pacific coast of North America, conifers have reached their full potential. Some of the world’s tallest trees reside here; the redwoods. Planet Earth shows a pine marten stalking a squirrel and great grey owl chicks take their first flight. Further south still, in the Valdivian forests of Chile, a population of smaller animals exists, including the pudu and the kodkod.
During the spring in the European broad-leaved forests, a mandarin duck leads its day-old family to leap from its tree trunk nest to the leaf litter below. Meanwhile, on a beautiful summer night on North America’s east coast, periodical cicadas emerge en masse to mate, an astonishing event that only occurs every seventeen years.
After revisiting Russia’s Amur leopards in winter, Planet Earth shows a timelapse sequence illustrating the effect of the ensuing spring on the deciduous forest floor. In India’s teak forests, a langur monkey strays too far from the chital that act as its sentinels and falls prey to a tiger.
Post adapted from Wikipedia. Content is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
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