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The tropical and subtropical coniferous forests of the world face a grave future with the ongoing effects of global warming. In the south, the extreme heat is too much for the conifers to adapt so quickly, and in the north, the dryness and desertification have begun to eat away at the forest's edge, and in the middle, humans are eating away at the trees. The animals are caught in between with nowhere to go and end up in habitats that can result deadly to them.
Succession in the tropical and subtropical coniferous forests tends to start like any other biome with pioneer species or small shrubs (secondary succession), but the climax species are very distinct. Many specific tropical coniferous forests have the climax species in the name, and the most common is pine oak trees.
This biome faces many dangers in its strive to survive, three of these major dangers being overgrazing by farm animals, clearing the land for timber and fuel wood, and for development of human settlements. The imperial woodpecker, the world's largest at a height of 60cm, has gone extinct due to the exploitation of dead trees for paper. In the Sierra Madre de Oaxaca in Mexico, the biome has lost 15.078% of its habitat and sadly, only 5.25% is protected.
Tropical and subtropical coniferous forests have been known to foster many indigenous people throughout the world, for example the Zapotecs in Mexico. This means that all the resources these people need are in the forest and evidently compete with the rest of the fauna for water, shelter, and food; the main resource then and now is the wood from the trees and their produce (nuts, fruits, etc).
Most tropical coniferous forests are found in North and Central America between the longitudes of 10 and 30 degrees above the equator. Besides this range of location, tropical coniferous forests are rare to be found anywhere else unless it is an island. This type of biome tends to cover a large amount of land, for example, the Sierra Madre Oriental in Mexico is 289,000 square km long, stretching from the southwestern US to Central America, and this makes it an ecoregion. This type of biome also tends to have mountainous areas of about 2500m on average. These mountains also tend to intercept humid air from the Atlantic Ocean, with the windward side to the east of the mountains (they get the rain, west side does not.
The average temperature ranges from 20 to 30 degrees Celsius, and although the rainfall might fluctuate, an average is about 150-250 cm of precipitation annually.
Limiting Factors:
Flora: