Ecoregion

A defined ecological zone characterized by distinctive flora, fauna, climate, soils, and ecosystem dynamics. The strictly-ecological substrate within which Bioregions take shape.

An Ecoregion is a unit of ecological classification — a contiguous geographical area sharing similar climate, dominant vegetation, characteristic species, and ecosystem function. The unit used by conservation biology, ecosystem mapping, and biodiversity science.

Approximately 750 to 1,000 terrestrial ecoregions across the Earth, depending on the classification system. Common mappings:

• Olson et al. (2001) WWF terrestrial ecoregions — 867 named ecoregions worldwide
• WWF Global 200 — 200+ priority ecoregions singled out for conservation focus
• Bailey's Ecoregions (US Forest Service)
• EPA Ecoregions (Levels I through IV, from coarse to fine — the US alone has ~967 Level IV ecoregions)

Marine ecoregions add hundreds more (Spalding et al. mapped 232 coastal/shelf marine ecoregions).

Ecoregions nest hierarchically: large biome-scale units (temperate broadleaf forest, tropical rainforest, tundra) contain many smaller Level III and IV ecoregions with specific community compositions.

In LIØNSBERG

Ecoregions serve dual roles in the holofractal scaling:

1. As place-scale — the ecological substrate of the land. What grows here, what lives here, what the climate is. Ecoregions are the empirical-ecological reality that Bioregions are shaped around. A Bioregion typically contains multiple Ecoregions — a coastal Bioregion may stretch from estuarine ecoregion to lowland forest to montane to alpine.

2. As federation-scale — Communities federate into Ecoregions as the next level of cooperative organization. Communities sharing a single ecological substrate (one watershed system, one forest belt, one ecological zone) federate at the Ecoregion scale to steward that substrate together. Ecoregions in turn federate into Bioregions. The federation hierarchy: Sovereign → Circle → Village → Community → Ecoregion → Bioregion → Georegional → Planetary Grid → ...

Ecoregions matter to LIØNSBERG because:

• Place-knowledge begins with ecological literacy — what grows here, what depends on what, what time of year does what.
• Stewardship at every federation scale is grounded in the actual ecology of the actual land — and Ecoregion-scale federation is the natural unit at which ecological stewardship above the Community scale operates.
• Regeneration requires knowing the ecoregion well enough to know what "regeneration" means in this specific place.

Distinguished From

• Bioregions — integrative cultural-ecological territories. Larger and more humanly-inhabited than a single Ecoregion typically; Bioregions usually span several Ecoregions.
• Watersheds — hydrological drainage units. An Ecoregion may contain many watersheds or be defined partly by a watershed; the two classifications use different lenses.
• Biomes — the largest ecological unit (tropical rainforest, boreal forest, tundra). Biomes contain many Ecoregions.

See Also

• Bioregion — the cultural-ecological integration
• Watershed — the hydrological unit
• Living Systems Member — the Constituency that holds standing for the land and all her relatives in the federated ecosystem
• Holofractal Omnifederation — the structural Pattern that nests all scales