concept

Forest stratification

The arrangement of a forest into horizontal layers stacked by height — forest floor, understory, canopy, and emergent layer — each with its own light, humidity, temperature, and wind. It is this layering, not sheer height, that turns a forest from one habitat into a stack of them, and the reason a single patch of forest can hold so much life. On Pandora the same four-floor architecture appears, scaled up around 300-metre Hometrees.