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🦣 Living Things
- Species (SPEE-sheez)
- One kind of living thing. Coquí frogs are one species; Roosevelt elk are another.
- Endemic (en-DEM-ik)
- Found naturally in just one place on Earth and nowhere else. The Olympic marmot is endemic to one peninsula; the coquí is endemic to Puerto Rico.
- Endangered
- A species with so few left that it could disappear forever without help. The Puerto Rican parrot is endangered.
- Threatened
- A species that is likely to become endangered soon if things don't change.
- Habitat
- The place where a plant or animal naturally lives and finds food, water, and shelter.
- Canopy
- The leafy "roof" of the forest, made by the tops of the tallest trees. Hurricane Maria stripped El Yunque's canopy bare.
- Understory
- The shadier layer of plants growing below the canopy, between the treetops and the forest floor.
- Epiphyte (EP-ih-fyte)
- A plant that grows on another plant instead of in the soil. Many ferns and orchids grow high on tree trunks this way.
- Decomposer
- A living thing, like a banana slug or a bracket fungus, that breaks down dead plants and animals and recycles them back into the soil.
- Food web
- All the ways living things in a place are connected by who eats what.
- Keystone species
- A species that many others depend on, so the whole forest changes if it disappears — like salmon in the Hoh.
- Adaptation
- A special feature or behavior that helps a living thing survive where it lives, like a coquí's loud call or an otter's water-repellent fur.
🌧 Climate & Weather
- Climate
- The usual weather of a place measured over many years — not just today, but the long-term pattern.
- Temperate
- Having cool winters and mild summers. The Hoh is a temperate rainforest.
- Tropical
- Warm all year, near the Equator. El Yunque is a tropical rainforest.
- Biome (BY-ohm)
- A big type of natural area with its own climate, plants, and animals, like a rainforest, a desert, or a coral reef.
- Glacier (GLAY-shur)
- A huge, slow-moving river of ice on a mountain. Melting glaciers feed the Hoh River in late summer.
- Snowpack
- The snow that piles up on mountains in winter and slowly melts in spring and summer, like a frozen water savings account.
- Orographic lift (or-oh-GRAF-ik)
- When wet ocean air is pushed up by mountains, cools, and falls as rain. It's why both rainforests get so much rain.
- Hurricane
- A giant spinning tropical storm with very strong winds and heavy rain. Hurricane Maria hit El Yunque in 2017.
- Resilience (ree-ZIL-yenss)
- The ability to recover after something harmful happens, like a forest growing back after a storm.
🗺 Maps, Science & Research
- Conservation
- Protecting nature and wildlife so they survive for the future. National parks and forests are tools for conservation.
- Captive breeding
- Raising animals safely with human help — like the Puerto Rican parrots at the Iguaca Aviary — so they can be returned to the wild.
- Source
- Where a fact comes from. Good researchers always name their sources — that's why every fact block here brings its source along.
- Public domain
- Photos, videos, or writing that belong to everyone and are free for anyone to use. Most government photos are public domain.
- StoryMap
- A web page that mixes maps, words, and pictures to tell a true story about a place — the thing you are building.
- Express Map
- A quick map you make right inside your StoryMap, with pins for the places in your story.
- Basemap
- The background map you build on top of — like a satellite (imagery) view or a topographic (mountains-and-trails) view.
- Lidar (LY-dar)
- A tool that fires laser beams from a plane to measure the height and shape of a forest. NASA used lidar to map El Yunque after the hurricane.