Where did the change begin?
Labs / Geography
Biome Explorer
Every biome on Earth is set by just two numbers: how warm it is and how much rain falls. Drag the point across the Whittaker climate diagram (or nudge the sliders) and the landscape on the right rebuilds itself — from bone-dry desert to dripping rainforest. Flip on seasonality to see how a dry season or a hard winter changes the same place.
Labs / Geography / Biome Explorer
Biome Explorer
Every biome on Earth is set by just two numbers: how warm it is and how much rain falls. Drag the point across the Whittaker climate diagram (or nudge the sliders) and the landscape on the right rebuilds itself — from bone-dry desert to dripping rainforest. Flip on seasonality to see how a dry season or a hard winter changes the same place.
Why it matters
Why explore this?
Geography explains how places, people, and Earth systems affect one another. This model lets you change one factor and watch its effects spread across space.
Explore
Try the model
Biome Tropical RainforestNPP ≈ 2,200 g/m²/yr
Plants Broadleaf evergreens, lianas & epiphytesAnimals jaguar, toucan, howler monkeyFound in Amazon Basin, Congo Basin, Borneo
Investigate
Questions to test
Predict first, try it in the model, then use what you observe to answer.
What to try
- Keep the rainfall high and slowly cool the temperature down. Where does rainforest hand off to taiga, and why does no forest survive the coldest corner?
- Two spots are both scorching hot — one wet, one dry. Why is one a jungle teeming with life and the other nearly empty?
- Watch the net primary productivity readout as you move around. Which climate grows the most living matter each year, and which grows almost none?
- Grassland and savanna sit close on the diagram. What separates a prairie of bison from a savanna of elephants and acacias?
- Turn seasonality on for the savanna and the taiga. How does a place survive months of drought — or months buried in snow?
Explain
Make sense of what happened
Connect the pattern to place: identify where the change begins, where its effects appear, and which process links those locations.
Check
Before you leave
What spatial pattern appeared?
Which process connects the cause and effect?
If you can answer all three using evidence from the model, you understand the main idea. If not, return to Explore and change one setting at a time.