114
Chapter 7: Provinces: The Secondary Compartments
the Celtic Sea to the Hebrides, (v) Irish Sea, (vi) the central Baltic, and finally (vii) Gulfs
of Bothnia and Finland.
The fractal nature of the coastal zone (remember that a coastline is a common paradigm
for fractal geometry) readily leads to an apparently logical, yet very fine regional subdivision, which, for the purpose of devising a global partition, must be resisted. Here, the
Gulf of California is treated as one potential subunit of the California Current Province.
But Santamaria-del-Angel et al. (1994) divided this narrow gulf into 14 biogeographic
regions on the basis of seasonal cycles of chlorophyll at 33 locations obtained from the
CZCS files—a methodology very close to that used in this book. However, because of the
fractal coastline geography, it would be just as logical (if more complete chlorophyll data
were available) for a further subdivision of each of these 14 regions to have been made.
I have found it convenient to treat this level of partition rather informally and use
it only where it seems essential to increase clarity of the regional description. There will
certainly be some who find that this arrangement does not do justice to the smaller shelf
region that especially interests them; to these people, I can only say that books, like lives,
have their natural limitations.
I hope it will have become obvious to any user of the partition reviewed in this book
that I have avoided, so far as I can, being dogmatic concerning the principles on which it is
based. Any attempt to partition the surface of our planet immediately encounters tension
between the theoretical symmetry of the seasonal irradiance pattern, or the wind systems
characteristic of each latitude, with the consequences of nonsymmetric continents. I have
suggested a partition of pelagic ecology that seems to be ideal in an ideal world, and have
attempted to apply it to a world in which the ideal nature of ocean basins is disrupted
by the consequences of plate tectonics. Locations of adjacent mountain ranges, of river
drainage basins, of archipelagos, and even the different shapes and sizes of the ocean
basins all result from this process. In the following chapters, you will encounter many
examples of provinces for which I have had to bend my original guidelines in order to
accommodate the facts of geography. The most glaring, perhaps, is the solution found to
accommodate the Indonesian archipelago—a great scattering of large and small islands
standing on the largest shelf seas anywhere, but within which several deep ocean basins—
of the magnitude of small seas, and named as such—exist. I am not proud of the solution
presented, but it’s the best I can make of a bad job. You will discover others, also, though
perhaps not so obviously messy as this one.
Chapter 7: Provinces: The Secondary Compartments
the Celtic Sea to the Hebrides, (v) Irish Sea, (vi) the central Baltic, and finally (vii) Gulfs
of Bothnia and Finland.
The fractal nature of the coastal zone (remember that a coastline is a common paradigm
for fractal geometry) readily leads to an apparently logical, yet very fine regional subdivision, which, for the purpose of devising a global partition, must be resisted. Here, the
Gulf of California is treated as one potential subunit of the California Current Province.
But Santamaria-del-Angel et al. (1994) divided this narrow gulf into 14 biogeographic
regions on the basis of seasonal cycles of chlorophyll at 33 locations obtained from the
CZCS files—a methodology very close to that used in this book. However, because of the
fractal coastline geography, it would be just as logical (if more complete chlorophyll data
were available) for a further subdivision of each of these 14 regions to have been made.
I have found it convenient to treat this level of partition rather informally and use
it only where it seems essential to increase clarity of the regional description. There will
certainly be some who find that this arrangement does not do justice to the smaller shelf
region that especially interests them; to these people, I can only say that books, like lives,
have their natural limitations.
I hope it will have become obvious to any user of the partition reviewed in this book
that I have avoided, so far as I can, being dogmatic concerning the principles on which it is
based. Any attempt to partition the surface of our planet immediately encounters tension
between the theoretical symmetry of the seasonal irradiance pattern, or the wind systems
characteristic of each latitude, with the consequences of nonsymmetric continents. I have
suggested a partition of pelagic ecology that seems to be ideal in an ideal world, and have
attempted to apply it to a world in which the ideal nature of ocean basins is disrupted
by the consequences of plate tectonics. Locations of adjacent mountain ranges, of river
drainage basins, of archipelagos, and even the different shapes and sizes of the ocean
basins all result from this process. In the following chapters, you will encounter many
examples of provinces for which I have had to bend my original guidelines in order to
accommodate the facts of geography. The most glaring, perhaps, is the solution found to
accommodate the Indonesian archipelago—a great scattering of large and small islands
standing on the largest shelf seas anywhere, but within which several deep ocean basins—
of the magnitude of small seas, and named as such—exist. I am not proud of the solution
presented, but it’s the best I can make of a bad job. You will discover others, also, though
perhaps not so obviously messy as this one.