California chaparral and woodlands
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California chaparral and woodlands | |
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Ecology | |
Biome | Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub |
Geography | |
Area | 121,000 km2 (47,000 sq mi) |
States | California and Baja California |
The California chaparral and woodlands is a terrestrial ecoregion of lower northern, central, and southern California (United States) and northwestern Baja California (Mexico), located on the west coast of North America. It is an ecoregion of the Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub Biome, and part of the Nearctic ecozone.
Contents
Setting
Three sub-ecoregions
The California chaparral and woodlands ecoregion is subdivided into three smaller ecoregions.[1]
- California coastal sage and chaparral ecoregion: In southern coastal California and northwestern coastal Baja California, as well as all the Channel Islands of California and Guadalupe Island.
- California montane chaparral and woodlands: In southern and central coast adjacent and inland California, covering some of the mountains of: the Coast Ranges; the Transverse Ranges; and the western slopes of the northern Peninsular Ranges.
- California interior chaparral and woodlands: In central interior California surrounding the California Central Valley cover the foothills and the Transverse Ranges and Sierra Nevada.
Locations
Most of the population of California and Baja California lives in these ecoregions, which includes the San Francisco Bay Area, Ventura County, the Greater Los Angeles Area, San Diego County, and Tijuana.
The California Central Valley grasslands ecoregion, as well as the coniferous Sierra Nevada forests, Northern California coastal forests, and Klamath-Siskiyou forests of northern California and southwestern Oregon, share many plant and animal affinities with the California chaparral and woodlands. Many botanists consider the California chaparral and woodlands, Sierra Nevada forests, Klamath-Siskiyou forests, and Northern California coastal forests as a single California Floristic Province, excluding the deserts of eastern California, which belong to other floristic provinces. Many Bioregionalists, including poet Gary Snyder, identify the central and northern Coast Ranges, Klamath-Siskiyou, the Central Valley, and Sierra Nevada as the Shasta Bioregion or the Alta California Bioregion.
Flora
The ecoregion includes a great variety of plant communities, including grasslands, oak savannas and woodlands, chaparral, and coniferous forests, including southern stands of the tall coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens). The flora of this ecoregion also includes tree species such as Gray or foothill pine (Pinus sabiniana), Scrub oak (Quercus dumosa), California buckeye (Aesculus californica), the rare Gowen cypress (Cupressus goveniana), the rare Monterey cypress (Cupressus macrocarpa), and a wealth of endemic plant species, including the extremely rare San Gabriel Mountain liveforever (Dudlea densiflora), Catalina mahogany (Cercocarpus traskiae), and the threatened most beautiful jewel-flower (Streptanthus albidus ssp. Peramoenus).[1]
Fauna
Species include the endangered California gnatcatcher (Polioptila californica), Costa's hummingbird (Calypte costae), coast horned lizard (Phrynosoma coronatum), and rosy boa (Lichanura trivirgata). Other animals found here are the endangered Heermann kangaroo rat (Dipodomys heermanni), Santa Cruz kangaroo rat (Dipodomys venustus), and white-eared pocket mouse (Perognathus alticolus).[1]
Another notable insect resident of this ecoregion is the rain beetle (Plecoma sp.) It spends up to several years living underground in a larval stage and emerges only during wet-season rains to mate.
Human influence
The region has been heavily affected by grazing, logging, dams and water diversions, and intensive agriculture and urbanization, as well as competition by numerous introduced or exotic plant and animal species. Some unique plant communities, like southern California's Coastal Sage Scrub, have been nearly eradicated by agriculture and urbanization. As a result, the region now has many rare and endangered species, including the California condor (Gymnogyps californianus).
See also
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References
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- Bakker, Elna (1971) An Island Called California. University of California Press; Berkeley.
- Dallman, Peter R. (1998). Plant Life in the World's Mediterranean Climates. California Native Plant Society–University of California Press; Berkeley.
- Ricketts, Taylor H; Eric Dinerstein; David M. Olson; Colby J. Loucks; et al. (1999). Terrestrial Ecoregions of North America: a Conservation Assessment. Island Press; Washington, DC.
- Schoenherr, Allan A. (1992). A Natural History of California. University of California Press; Berkeley.
External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to California chaparral and woodlands. |
- World Wildlife Fund: California Chaparral and Woodlands ecoregion (121)
- Official California Chaparral Institute website
- California Coastal Sage and Chaparral images at bioimages.vanderbilt.edu (slow modem version)
- California Interior Chaparral and Woodlands images at bioimages.vanderbilt.edu — (slow modem version)
- California Montane Chaparral and Woodlands images at bioimages.vanderbilt.edu — (slow modem version)
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. (material included verbatim under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license
- Pages with reference errors
- Pages with broken file links
- Commons category link is defined as the pagename
- California chaparral and woodlands
- Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub
- Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub in the United States
- Ecoregions of California
- Ecoregions of Mexico
- Flora of California
- Forests of California
- Natural history of the California chaparral and woodlands
- Natural history of Baja California
- Plant communities of California
- Nearctic ecozone