A World Tour of Biomes and Ecosystems

Start with the biome the atlas was missing outright: every lake, river and freshwater wetland on Earth, from a garden pond to Lake Baikal.

Lake Baikal: the deepest, oldest example, holding a fifth of the world's unfrozen fresh water alone.

The Mesopotamian Marshes: a freshwater wetland deliberately drained, then deliberately reflooded, with its own recovery still an open question here.

Cross into the Marine biome at its tidal edge: the Wadden Sea, the world's largest unbroken tidal-flat system and a lifeline for ten million migratory birds.

The Coral Triangle: the global center of marine biodiversity, holding three-quarters of the world's coral species.

The Mesoamerican Reef: the world's second largest barrier reef system, under sustained bleaching and disease pressure.

Onto land and into Brazil's Cerrado, the most biodiverse savanna on Earth, classified here under the Grassland biome, itself the subject of a new classification dissent this same wave recorded.

Chaparral: the Mediterranean-type shrubland biome the atlas had never named, found on five continents under five different regional names.

End in Fynbos, chaparral's South African face: the smallest of the world's six floral kingdoms, and, plant for plant, one of the richest places on Earth.

A closing detour to the wettest forests on Earth: Temperate Rainforest, the biome this atlas had been quietly folding into ordinary Temperate Forest until now.