Thursday, 15 September 2011

Terrestrial Ecozone

An ecozone is the broadest biogeographic division of the Earth’s land surface, based on distributional patterns of terrestrial organisms.

Ecozone delineate areas of the Earth’s surface within which organism have been evolving in relative isolation over long periods of time, separated from one another by geographic features, such as oceans, deserts, mountain ranges, that constitute barriers to migration.

An ecozone may include a number of different biomes.  Yet similar biomes in different ecozones may be inhabited by plants and animals with very different evolutionary histories.

A bioregion is a geographic clusters of ecoregions that may span several habitat types, but have strong biogeographic affinities, particularly at taxonomic levels higher than the species level.

WWF scheme divides the Earth’s land surface into 8 ecozones, and further subdivides ecozones into bioregions :

AfrotropicSahel & Sudan
Southern Arabian Woodlands
Forest Zone
East Africa Grassland & Savannas
East Africa's Highlands
Southern African Woodland, Savannas & Grasslands
Dessert of Sourthern Africa
Cape Floristic Region
Madagascar & Indian Ocean Islands
AntarcticAntartica
AustralasiaWallacea
New Guinea & Melanesia
IndomalayaIndia subcontinent
Indochina
Sunda Shelf & Philippines
NearcticCanadian Shield
Eastern North America
Northern Mexico
Western North America
NeotropicalAmazonia
Carribean
Central America
Central Andes
Eastern South America
Northern Andes
Orinoco
Southern South America
OceaniaOceania
PalearcticEuro-Siberian Region
Mediterranean Basin
Sahara & Arabian Desserts
Western & Central Asia
East Asia
Freshwater

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