Land Biomes in Thrive

[Rathalos]

@aaronmkersh

I think I was slightly misleading with my “tier system”. There is no built-in progression for biomes, and biomes are only defined by what is there in the patch, a.k.a the humidity, temperature, and species.

Ah I see! Sorry, I misinterpreted that.

@aaronmkersh

Terrain is too complicated of a factor to bake into our biome classification scheme in my opinion. Some biomes, like wetlands, can only exist with highly specific terrain, while others like desert can exist anywhere with certain parameters, in this case little rain.

If that is the case, one thing to keep in mind is that probably the world would be divided into regions based on those abiotic factors of terrain and climate? Because I think the distribution of species in auto-evo would need those region “patches” to already be settled. So whatever size these regions are, they would get “filled in” with whole uniform biomes. But that makes sense if we deliberately create these regions based on those factors that should decide what life can live there. I think @HyperbolicHadron already discussed this before.

@aaronmkersh

So these are some good weird cases to think about, and I think these can be addressed by clarifying some sub types of Barrens and Desert.

I think those are good additions, trying to cover as much as possible without bloating the list too much.

@aaronmkersh

I think environments with “plants but not grasses or shrubs” generally qualify as either Pioneer barrens or Semi-arid desert, depending on the extent of soil development.

One thing I am still really looking at is that potential early Devonian scenario of “no shrubs, but plenty of herbaceous small plants and probably soil“. That seems like it would be a likely enough scenario?

It doesn’t match Pioneer Barrens, because soil. If Deserts are defined by rainfall, it can’t be a Desert (and visually/mechanically, I think it would not fit). Not scrubland, because no shrubs. In types of vegetation, I still think it visually looks like a Tundra, but that can’t be it if those are defined by permafrost. I guess it’s like a Grassland, just that the herbaceous plants are not grass-like? On the community forums, Herblands was suggested? It’s not any official widely used term as far as I can see, but I did see it used in a few published papers where they probably couldn’t find any existing word to describe what they meant.

Or maybe we’re being a bit too strict on requiring grassland biomes to have herbaceous plants that are actually grass-like? Sure, on earth they’re a late development because before then small herbaceous plants were not displacing shrubs and trees. But where does that leave us when shrubs and trees just don’t exist (yet)?

@aaronmkersh

Pioneer barrens have life, but no soil yet. They are still undergoing primary succession. There notably is rainfall. If there’s a lack of rainfall/humidity, this is instead a desert.

Very small nitpick here: Pioneer to me explicitly says this is a first step before the establishment of other life (either evolving later, or colonising from elsewhere later), which is actually unusual compared to the other names. Maybe we can use a term that is more prediction-neutral? Random grab: Biotic Barrens, Sparse, Simple, Basic, Crust?

@aaronmkersh

As for Prototaxites… Let’s just throw it in the Pioneer Barrens bucket! But seriously, I think that’s the best solution for weird organisms like that. Same for bacterial mats, stromatolites, and any weird alien things that we can’t classify as shrubs, grass or trees. I’m sure auto-evil (I meant to type auto-evo just now, but I’m leaving it) will mock our attempts at classifying plants and biomes, but we gotta draw the lines somewhere.

Actually something that also the early Devonian not-grassland made me think about:

Maybe for the purpose of classifying plants in order to classify biomes we want to look more purely at the plant’s more obvious and basic characteristics that matter for moving around and living near it?

• Sessile species with an 8 meter tall trunk? That’s a tree.
• It’s not a plant but a giant lichen in symbiosis with algae? Cool, but still a tree.
• It’s actually growing from detritus it’s sucking out of the soil instead of photosynthesis? Weird, but still a tree.
• Made with rock instead of wood? Still tree!
• It’s actually using radio-synthesis from the open nuclear reactor you put next to it? Tree!

Taking this to the extreme end, that early Devonian landscape would be described as a “grassland” with occasional “trees”, but not enough to make it a “forest”. If we ignore climate, Savannah?

In fact:

@aaronmkersh

I see what you’re saying, and I think the latter option is better, having a separate biome and terrain classification. Terrain is too complicated of a factor to bake into our biome classification scheme in my opinion. Some biomes, like wetlands, can only exist with highly specific terrain, while others like desert can exist anywhere with certain parameters, in this case little rain.

…

I think I was slightly misleading with my “tier system”. There is no built-in progression for biomes, and biomes are only defined by what is there in the patch, a.k.a the humidity, temperature, and species.

Have you considered taking this a step further?

We could classify and divide regions/patches first based purely on a combination of the a-biotic terrain and climate variables.

Then the “biome” classification (probably renamed to vegetation type?) is purely a description of the type and distribution of “vegetation”, without any regard for or reference to why (terrain and climate) those species ended up dominating there.

I realise this is a big shake-up but I guess it could cut down on the number of different biomes, and make it easier to avoid edge-cases where we don’t have a name for that particular combination of vegetation and climate?

(Something I came across while investigating this: Problems with bioclimatic definitions of vegetation types)

I guess with this we end up with a Vegetation Classification system that is not strictly biomes?

@aaronmkersh

As a side note, I revisited wetlands, because I had a Saltwater Wetland and Freshwater Wetland biome under Marine and Freshwater biomes respectively, and that felt wrong to me. The whole point of wetlands is they’re a transitional zone between land and sea, so I’ve created a special transitional biome category just for them. You win, wetlands.

I want to note here that your wetland biomes here actually are a purely geographical/terrain description, without taking into account present biology (other than being Coastal if there is no life at all). That for example combines Marshes and Swamps into one thing.

Marsh

Swamp

Those seem ecologically and visually different so may be worth separating?

Or with my proposed change above that could be “terrain: wetland, vegetation: low” versus “terrain: wetland, vegetation: forest”.