Ecoclimax

 Wolves used to live everywhere on this continent. Not just in a few wild corners - everywhere. From the desert mountains of the Southwest up through the Great Plains, across the boreal forests of Canada, out to the Pacific islands, down into Mexico. At least 23 different subspecies evolved to match whatever local conditions they found. The historical map on the left shows where a different subspecies lived. You had Arctic wolves in Greenland and the northern islands, stocky and pale. Mexican wolves in Arizona and New Mexico, smaller and adapted to heat. Great Plains wolves that followed bison herds. Vancouver Island wolves on the Pacific coast. Newfoundland wolves. Labrador wolves. Texas wolves. They filled every available niche. The current map on the right is mostly gray. What's left sits way up in Canada and Alaska, with some holdouts around the Great Lakes and scattered reintroduced groups in the Rockies. Three subspecies went extinct completely - the Mogollon Mountain Wolf fr...

Soil is the backbone of Earth's ecosystems, holding everything together from forests to rivers while also giving us the base for growing food like grains and vegetables. Chernozems rank as one of the top soils for richness. Russians dub them "black earth" ( "chernozems" ) for their inky color, which builds up from plant remains over ages, hitting around 10 to 16 percent organics . They come from open grasslands hit by freezing winters, steamy summers, and steady but not heavy rains. Extra water would rinse out the good stuff, and dryness would stunt the grasses. Each year, those grasses push up, fade, and mix back in, with roots pushing nutrients deep to form solid, fertile bands. Right now, they cover some 230 million hectares, spread through the Eurasian steppes and North American prairies where weather and plants synced up long ago. The maps below by vividmaps.com point out the most valuable soils on earth. Russia tops the list with 1,200,000 square kilomete...