What are the limitations in the taigas?

Question

What are the limitations in the taigas?

Answer 1

Taigas are typically on thin soils that are mostly acidic, do not hold a lot of water in the soil, but may be in a poorly drained area.

There are definite exceptions to all of those statements.

Thin soil  with a forest cover is subject to drying out to the point of being a major fire hazard.

While the acidity of the soil is in many places a problem for all life, the acidity has a special related problem. Acids bring out of the rock many toxic metallic salts. As long as there is adequate water, that is bad, but when drought hits these metallic salts concentrate.

Rock, rock everywhere, but not a drop of calcium or magnesium. This can be a major health problem for many species in the taigas.

Now, as I said, there are exceptions, and species that can travel to find calcium and magnesium do so.  But vegetation has to be well adapted to life without.

Where we have wetlands, we often have acid peat moss bogs. This means millions of tons of plant matter that is not decomposing unless it happens to dry out. Some efforts have been made to drain these bogs, and they really do decompose rapidly when dried out.