What Is A Biome?

The American Heritage Dictionary defines a biome as "A major regional or global biotic community, such as a grassland or desert, characterized chiefly by the dominant forms of plant life and the prevailing climate."

The world and regional maps of Raieh on this web site represent a wide variety of biomes, including tundra, glacier, taiga, woodland, jungle, grassland, steppe, savanna, and desert. The maps are generated by custom built Fractal World software, available for free download.

The Fractal World software determines biome regions as a simple function of the mean annual temperature and mean annual precipitation. The diagram below shows the relationship between temperature, precipitation, and biome.

Whittaker Biome Diagram

The fractal software first generates a heightmap of the entire planet. From this world map, the software estimates the average annual precipitation and temperature of each region of the world. Finally, the program uses the relationship shown above to estimate the biome of each region of Raieh.

Here's a biome world map of Raieh:

RaiehBiomeMap