Compendium: Planet Characteristics

Land Cover

Habitable planets will have one of the following land cover types:

• Barren: land that is too poor to produce much vegetation and lacks distinguishing physiographic features.
• Desert: terrain which receives little precipitation which results in harsh conditions that are hostile to plant and animal life. Predominate geography consists of sand and dunes.
• Forest: dominated by perennial plants with long trunks supporting branches and foliage, often categorized as trees.
• Grassland: predominant vegetation consists of flowering plants with a stem that is commonly hollow and that does not support foliage, often categorized as grass. Similar to prairie.
• Ice:extended mass of ice covering the majority of the planet.
• Jungle: overgrown forest co-mingled with tangled vegetation.
• Marsh: land that is saturated with water on a regular or persistent basis and is dominated grass.
• Mountain: distinct rocky landforms that exhibit significant elevation.
• Prairie: typically a landscape where the dominate vegetation is grasses and shrubs with few trees. Similar to grassland.
• Rocky: flat or nearly flat landscape populated with numerous rocks.
• Savanna: a grassland or prairie ecosystem populated by trees which do not close to a canopy.
• Swamp: land that is saturated with water on a regular or persistent basis and populated with a large amount of trees.
• Telluric: a planet which contains a mix of land covers with no dominate type. Large oceans are frequently present.
• Tundra: areas where the near surface substrata is permanently frozen with vegetation often categorized as shrub, grass, or moss.
• Wetland: dominated by shallow areas that are saturated with water on a regular or persistent basis along with an abundance of aquatic vegetation.