Ecosystems

An ecosystem in this atlas is a named, bounded community of living things and the physical environment they interact within, one step more specific than the broad climate pattern a Biome describes: where Tropical Rainforest names a worldwide pattern, the Amazon Rainforest or the Congo Basin names an ecosystem living inside it. Eight bands group the atlas's ecosystem entities by their dominant biome type: Tropical Rainforest, Desert, Savanna and Grassland, Wetland and Freshwater, Marine and Coral Reef, Boreal Forest and Taiga, Temperate Forest and Shrubland, and Polar and Antarctic. A place whose landform or political geography is the more relevant fact stays with Geography under this atlas's own seam; an ecosystem here is grouped by what lives in it, not by where it sits on a map.