Atlas Trail
Four Gaps on the Map: Savanna, Mangrove, Antarctica, Australia
A savanna finally split out from grassland, a mangrove coast that answers to cold rather than heat, the most pristine ocean left on Earth, and a rainforest older than flowering plants: the wave that took Biomes and Ecosystems to worldwide coverage.
Stop 1 of 8.
Biomes
Start with a correction: Savanna, split out as its own biome for the first time, defined by the shape of its rainfall rather than its heat.
Stop 2 of 8.
Ecosystems
The Serengeti, reclassified here from Grassland to Savanna: its own description called it savanna all along.
Stop 3 of 8.
Biomes
Mangrove Forest: a biome bounded by cold tolerance, not heat, and honest about the numbers that do not exist.
Stop 4 of 8.
Ecosystems
Into the Marine biome and its kelp forests, an ecosystem that had a description but no fact of its own until this wave.
Stop 5 of 8.
Species
The sea otter: the keystone predator that gives the kelp forest its first species, hunted to 2,000 animals and now recovering.
Stop 6 of 8.
Ecosystems
South to Antarctica: the Ross Sea, called by many scientists the last largely undisturbed ocean on Earth, and the atlas's first Antarctic ecosystem.
Stop 7 of 8.
Species
Back on land: the California condor, down to 22 birds in the 1980s and now recovered past 500, foraging the chaparral and coastal scrub of North America.
Stop 8 of 8.
Ecosystems
End in Australia's Daintree Rainforest, up to 180 million years of continuous forest and the atlas's first terrestrial Australian ecosystem.
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