In ecology, a biome is a major regional group of distinctive plant and animal communities best adapted to the region's physical natural environment, latitude, altitude and terrain. A biome is made up of communities at stable steady state and all associated transitional, disturbed, or degraded, vegetation, fauna and soils, but can often be identified by the climax vegetation type.
A fundamental classification of biomes is into:
Terrestrial (or continental) biomes, and Aquatic biomes.
The criteria used for classification of biomes are:
- Availability of soil
- Availability of water
- Availability of vegetation cover