Eastern Asia is one of the regions of

temperate In geography, the temperate climates of Earth occur in the middle latitudes (23.5° to 66.5° N/S of Equator), which span between the tropics and the polar regions of Earth. These zones generally have wider temperature ranges throughout t ...

Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an area ...

defined in the

World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions The World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) is a biogeographical system developed by the international Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) organization, formerly the International Working Group on Taxonomic Da ...

(WGSRPD) for use in recording the distribution of plants. It is very much smaller than common definitions of

East Asia East Asia is the eastern region of Asia, which is defined in both geographical and ethno-cultural terms. The modern states of East Asia include China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan. China, North Korea, South Korea and ...

. It consists of the

Korean Peninsula Korea ( ko, 한국, or , ) is a peninsular region in East Asia. Since 1945, it has been divided at or near the 38th parallel, with North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) comprising its northern half and South Korea (Republic o ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

(

Hokkaido is Japan's second largest island and comprises the largest and northernmost prefecture, making up its own region. The Tsugaru Strait separates Hokkaidō from Honshu; the two islands are connected by the undersea railway Seikan Tunnel. The la ...

Honshu , historically called , is the largest and most populous island of Japan. It is located south of Hokkaidō across the Tsugaru Strait, north of Shikoku across the Inland Sea, and northeast of Kyūshū across the Kanmon Straits. The island separ ...

Kyushu is the third-largest island of Japan's five main islands and the most southerly of the four largest islands ( i.e. excluding Okinawa). In the past, it has been known as , and . The historical regional name referred to Kyushu and its surroun ...

and

Shikoku is the smallest of the four main islands of Japan. It is long and between wide. It has a population of 3.8 million (, 3.1%). It is south of Honshu and northeast of Kyushu. Shikoku's ancient names include ''Iyo-no-futana-shima'' (), '' ...

, plus associated offshore islands – the

Volcano Islands The or are a group of three Japanese-governed islands in Micronesia. They lie south of the Ogasawara Islands and belong to the municipality of Ogasawara, Tokyo, Tokyo Metropolis, Japan. The islands are all active volcanoes lying atop ...

(Kazan-retto), the

Ryukyu Islands The , also known as the or the , are a chain of Japanese islands that stretch southwest from Kyushu to Taiwan: the Ōsumi, Tokara, Amami, Okinawa, and Sakishima Islands (further divided into the Miyako and Yaeyama Islands), with Yonaguni ...

(Nansei-shoto) and the

Bonin Islands The Bonin Islands, also known as the , are an archipelago of over 30 subtropical and tropical islands, some directly south of Tokyo, Japan and northwest of Guam. The name "Bonin Islands" comes from the Japanese word ''bunin'' (an archaic readi ...

(Ogasawara-shoto)), and

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

. Some islands belonging to Japan politically, such as

Marcus Island , also known as Marcus Island, is an isolated Japanese coral atoll in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, located some southeast of Tokyo and east of the closest Japanese island, South Iwo Jima of the Ogasawara Islands, and nearly on a straight line ...

(Minami-Tori-shima), have greater floristic affinity with similar Pacific islands and are placed in the botanical continent of the Pacific.

WGSRPD system

The WGSRPD is a

biogeographical Biogeography is the study of the distribution of species and ecosystems in geographic space and through geological time. Organisms and biological communities often vary in a regular fashion along geographic gradients of latitude, elevation, i ...

system developed by the international

Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG), originally called the Taxonomic Databases Working Group, is a non-profit scientific and educational association that works to develop open standards for the exchange of biodiversity data, facilitating bio ...

organization. The system provides clear definitions and codes for recording

plant Plants are predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all current definitions of Plantae exclud ...

distributions at four scales or levels, from "botanical continents" down to parts of large countries. The top two levels are given numerical codes. The botanical continent 3 Asia-Temperate has nine regions, one of which is 38 Eastern Asia. Organizations and works using the scheme include the

International Union for Conservation of Nature The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN; officially International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natu ...

(IUCN), the

Germplasm Resources Information Network Germplasm Resources Information Network or GRIN is an online USDA National Genetic Resources Program software project to comprehensively manage the computer database for the holdings of all plant germplasm collected by the National Plant Germplasm ...

(GRIN), and the

World Checklist of Selected Plant Families The World Checklist of Selected Plant Families (usually abbreviated to WCSP) is an "international collaborative programme that provides the latest peer reviewed and published opinions on the accepted scientific names and synonyms of selected plan ...

(WCSP). For example, the entry for ''

Lilium concolor ''Lilium concolor'' (also known as morning star lily) is a species of flowering plant in the ''Liliaceae, lily family'' which occurs naturally in China, Japan, Korea and Russia. Its relationship with other species is not clear, although it has so ...

'' in the WCSP includes the numerical codes "30 31 36 37 38", the initial "3" showing these are all regions of Asia-Temperate, with "38" being Eastern Asia.

Eastern Asia subdivisions

The Eastern Asia region is subdivided into areas and "basic recording units", which are given letter codes:

Changes

Some small changes were made to the Eastern Asia region between the first and second editions of the WGSRPD. The

(Kazan-retto) and the

(Ogasawara-shoto) were moved from the Pacific botanical continent to Eastern Asia within Asia-Temperate as they have many

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsew ...

plants in common with Eastern Asia.

References

Bibliography

*{{citation , last=Brummitt , first=R.K. , year=2001 , title=World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions: Edition 2 , publisher=International Working Group on Taxonomic Databases For Plant Sciences (TDWG) , url = http://www.nhm.ac.uk/hosted_sites/tdwg/TDWG_geo2.pdf , access-date = 2006-11-27 Biogeography Geography of East Asia

WGSRPD system

Eastern Asia subdivisions

Changes

See also

References

Bibliography