Chaparral is a shrubland plant community found primarily in the U.S. state of California, southern Oregon, and in the northern portion of the Baja California Peninsula, Mexico. It is shaped by a Mediterranean climate and infrequent, high-intensity crown fires, featuring summer-drought-tolerant plants with hard sclerophyllous evergreen leaves, as contrasted with the associated soft-leaved, drought-deciduous, scrub community of coastal sage scrub, found often on drier, southern facing slopes within the chaparral biome. Three other closely related chaparral shrubland systems occur in central Arizona, western Texas, and along the eastern side of central Mexico's mountain chains (mexical), all having summer rains in contrast to the Mediterraean climate of other chaparral formations. Chaparral comprises 9% of the California's wildland vegetation and contains 20% of its plant species. The name comes from the Spanish word for place of the scrub oak, chaparro.
The California chaparral and woodlands is a terrestrial ecoregion of southwestern Oregon, northern, central, and southern California 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 realm.
The ecology of California can be understood by dividing the state into a number of ecoregions, which contain distinct ecological communities of plants and animals in a contiguous region. The ecoregions of California can be grouped into four major groups: desert ecoregions, Mediterranean ecoregions, forested mountains, and coastal forests.
The Northern California coastal forests are a temperate coniferous forests ecoregion of coastal Northern California.
The Golden Gate Biosphere is a biosphere reserve in Northern California. It was created by UNESCO in 1988 and encompasses 13 protected areas in the San Francisco Bay Area. It extends through the central California coastal region from the Bodega Marine Reserve in the north to Jasper Ridge in the south and includes the Farallon Islands, Angel Island, and Alcatraz within the San Francisco Bay. The biosphere reserve is situated on both sides of the San Andreas Fault. Each side has a completely different type of bedrock, and the western side of the rift is moving northward. It encompasses a diverse range of marine, coastal, and upland habitats of the California chaparral and woodlands and Northern California coastal forests ecoregions, including mixed evergreen forests, Coast Redwood forests, Douglas-fir forests, Bishop pine forests, oak forests, woodlands and savannas, northern coastal scrub, chaparral, coastal dune, coastal strand, tidepools, kelp forests, coastal grasslands, and marshes. The associated fauna is also rich with cougars, Tule elk, California sea lions, elephant seals, and many shorebirds.
California mixed evergreen forest is an plant community found in the mountain ranges of California and southwestern Oregon.
The Coast Ranges of California span 400 miles (644 km) from Del Norte or Humboldt County, California, south to Santa Barbara County. The other three coastal California mountain ranges are the Transverse Ranges, Peninsular Ranges and the Klamath Mountains.
California oak woodland is a plant community found throughout the California chaparral and woodlands ecoregion of California in the United States and northwestern Baja California in Mexico. Oak woodland is widespread at lower elevations in coastal California; in interior valleys of the Coast Ranges, Transverse Ranges and Peninsular Ranges; and in a ring around the California Central Valley grasslands. The dominant trees are oaks, interspersed with other broadleaf and coniferous trees, with an understory of grasses, herbs, geophytes, and California native plants.
Sonoma Mountain is a prominent landform within the Sonoma Mountains of southern Sonoma County, California. At elevation of 2,463 ft (751 m), Sonoma Mountain offers expansive views of the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Sonoma Valley to the east. In fact, the viticultural area extends in isolated patches up the eastern slopes of Sonoma Mountain to almost 1,700 feet (520 m) in elevation.
The Landels-Hill Big Creek Reserve is a constituent of the University of California Natural Reserve System. It is located off State Route 1 in the Big Sur area on California's central coast, fifty miles south of Monterey and adjacent to the Big Creek State Marine Reserve and Big Creek State Marine Conservation Area.
The brush mouse is a species of rodent in the family Cricetidae. It is found in mountainous areas of Mexico and the western United States at altitudes over 2,000 m (6,600 ft).
The Klamath Mountains ecoregion of Oregon and California lies inland and north of the Coast Range ecoregion, extending from the Umpqua River in the north to the Sacramento Valley in the south. It encompasses the highly dissected ridges, foothills, and valleys of the Klamath and Siskiyou Mountains. It corresponds to the Level III ecoregion designated by the Environmental Protection Agency and to the Klamath-Siskiyou forests ecoregion designated by the World Wide Fund for Nature.
The California coastal sage and chaparral is a Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub ecoregion located in southwestern California and northwestern Baja California (Mexico). It is part of the larger California chaparral and woodlands ecoregion.
The South Fork Eel River Wilderness is a 12,868-acre (5,207 ha) wilderness area located in Mendocino County, California. The wilderness was added to the National Wilderness Preservation System when the United States Congress passed the Northern California Coastal Wild Heritage Wilderness Act in 2006. The Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is the agency in charge.
The Southeastern conifer forests are a temperate coniferous forest ecoregion of the southeastern United States. It is the largest conifer forest ecoregion east of the Mississippi River.
Stebbins Cold Canyon Reserve is a unit of the University of California Natural Reserve System and is administered by the University of California, Davis. It is within the Blue Ridge Berryessa Natural Area, in the Northern Inner California Coast Ranges.
The Dyfi Biosphere is situated at the coast of south-central Wales in the estuary of the River Dyfi, and is a biosphere reserve representative of salt marshes and estuarine systems in the west of the United Kingdom. The estuary forms one of the most important wildfowl and shorebird centres in Wales and also comprises a Ramsar site.
The California Coast Ranges Biosphere Reserve was a UNESCO Biosphere reserve located along the California Coast Ranges of northern California and the San Francisco Bay area until June 2017. This biosphere reserve includes a highly diverse complex of evergreen sclerophyllous woodland, coastal, estuary and marine ecosystems.
The San Dimas Biosphere Reserve and Experimental Forest is an experimental forest located in the front range of the San Gabriel Mountains of southern California. San Dimas constitutes a protected field laboratory jointly managed by the Angeles National Forest and the Pacific Southwest Research Station of the United States Forest Service under the designation San Dimas Experimental Forest. It was designated as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 1976 and withdrawn from the programme in July 2018.
The San Joaquin Biosphere Reserve is a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve located on the western slopes of the central Sierra Nevada mountains Madera County, California, about 20 miles (32 km) north of Fresno. This biosphere reserve represents the California steppe and California woodlands with blue oak, interior live oak. and digger pine.
