This is a list of terrestrial
ecoregions as compiled by the
World Wildlife Fund
The World Wide Fund for Nature Inc. (WWF) is an international non-governmental organization founded in 1961 that works in the field of wilderness preservation and the reduction of human impact on the environment. It was formerly named the Wo ...
(WWF). The WWF identifies
terrestrial
Terrestrial refers to things related to land or the planet Earth.
Terrestrial may also refer to:
* Terrestrial animal, an animal that lives on land opposed to living in water, or sometimes an animal that lives on or near the ground, as opposed to ...
,
freshwater, and
marine ecoregion
A marine ecoregion is an ecoregion, or ecological region, of the oceans and seas identified and defined based on biogeographic characteristics.
Introduction
A more complete definition describes them as “Areas of relatively homogeneous species ...
s.
The terrestrial scheme divides the Earth's land surface into 8
biogeographic realm
A biogeographic realm or ecozone is the broadest biogeographic division of Earth's land surface, based on distributional patterns of terrestrial organisms. They are subdivided into bioregions, which are further subdivided into ecoregions.
De ...
s, containing 867 smaller ecoregions. Each ecoregion is classified into one of 14 major habitat types, or
biome
A biome () is a biogeographical unit consisting of a biological community that has formed in response to the physical environment in which they are found and a shared regional climate. Biomes may span more than one continent. Biome is a broader ...
s.
In 2017 the WWF team revised ecosystem names and boundaries in the Arabian Peninsula, drier African regions, and Southeastern United States.
[Eric Dinerstein, David Olson, et al. (2017). An Ecoregion-Based Approach to Protecting Half the Terrestrial Realm, BioScience, Volume 67, Issue 6, June 2017, Pages 534–545, ]
Additional ecoregions for Antarctic Realm are currently being incorporated (based on Terauds et al. 2012).
Antarctic Realm - Tundra Biome:
1 North-east Antarctic Peninsula;
2 South Orkney Islands;
3 North-west Antarctic Peninsula;
4 Central south Antarctic Peninsula;
5 Enderby Land;
6 Dronning Maud Land;
7 East Antarctica;
8 North Victoria Land;
9 South Victoria Land;
10 Transantarctic Mountains;
11 Ellsworth Mountains;
12 Marie Byrd Land;
13 Adelie Land;
14 Ellsworth Land;
15 South Antarctic Peninsula.
Terauds, A, SL Chown, F Morgan, HJ Peat, DJ Watts, H Keys, P Convey, DM Bergstrom. 2012. Conservation biogeography of the Antarctic. Diversity and Distributions 1–16.
See also
*
Global 200
The Global 200 is the list of ecoregions identified by the World Wide Fund for Nature ( WWF), the global conservation organization, as priorities for conservation. According to WWF, an ecoregion is defined as a "relatively large unit of land or w ...
*
List of marine ecoregions (WWF)
The following is a list of marine ecoregions, as defined by the WWF and The Nature Conservancy
The WWF/Nature Conservancy scheme groups the individual ecoregions into 12 marine realms, which represent the broad latitudinal divisions of polar, te ...
References
* 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.
External links
*{{commons category inline, Maps of WWF ecoregions
The Encyclopedia of Earth: List of ecoregions, with full articles on most of them*
ttp://www.panda.org/about_wwf/where_we_work/ecoregions/ecoregion_list/index.cfm List of ecoregionsNorth American Ecoregions by map at bioimages.vanderbilt.edu
terrestrial
Terrestrial refers to things related to land or the planet Earth.
Terrestrial may also refer to:
* Terrestrial animal, an animal that lives on land opposed to living in water, or sometimes an animal that lives on or near the ground, as opposed to ...
terrestrial
Terrestrial refers to things related to land or the planet Earth.
Terrestrial may also refer to:
* Terrestrial animal, an animal that lives on land opposed to living in water, or sometimes an animal that lives on or near the ground, as opposed to ...