Preface to the First Edition
Most environmental concerns cross boundaries. Borders that separate
countries, ecosystems, or jurisdiction of regulatory agencies are not respected
by problems such as air pollution, declining anadromous fisheries, forest
diseases, or threats to biodiversity. To address these problems, environmental
planners and decision-makers must consider how geographically related
systems are linked to form larger systems. Issues that may appear to be
local will often require solutions at the landscape and region scale—working
with the larger pattern, understanding how it works, and designing in harmony with it.
Following this reasoning, my task was to develop a geographical,
ecologically based system, which would classify the natural ecoregions of
the Earth and plot their distribution. The project built on work published by
John Crowley in 1967 (Crowley 1967). In 1989, I published a terrestrial
ecoregions map at a scale of 1:30,000,000 (Bailey 1989). A simplified,
reduced-scale version appears in my book Ecosystem Geography (Bailey
1996) and the 19th edition of Goode’s World Atlas. The influence of such
ecoregion mapping efforts on research and planning efforts has been considerable. For example, the National Science Foundation’s Long-Term Ecological Research program and The Nature Conservancy’s ecoregional planning
programs are taking place within the framework of this map. The Sierra Club
announced in 1994 (Sierra March–April 1994) a “critical ecoregions” program designed to protect and restore 21 regional ecosystems in the United
States and Canada. In another effort, the United States Forest Service has
adopted ecoregion units as part of an ecologically based mapping system to
support ecosystem management and assessment.
Understanding the continental systems requires a grasp of the ocean
systems that exert enormous influence on terrestrial climatic patterns. This
book is unique in the extended treatment (see Chaps. 2 and 3, and Plate 1) of
oceanic ecoregions.
Ecoregions is intended to provide detailed descriptions, illustrations, and
examples that will assist the user of the ecoregion maps in interpreting them.
It amplifies the necessarily brief descriptions of the ecoregion units which
appear in the legends to the maps. However, description without reference to
genesis or origin soon becomes dull and tiresome—terms which unfortunately characterize much of the ecological literature on regions. A major
objective of this book, therefore, is to suggest explanations of the
mechanisms which act to produce the world pattern of ecoregion distribution,
ix
Most environmental concerns cross boundaries. Borders that separate
countries, ecosystems, or jurisdiction of regulatory agencies are not respected
by problems such as air pollution, declining anadromous fisheries, forest
diseases, or threats to biodiversity. To address these problems, environmental
planners and decision-makers must consider how geographically related
systems are linked to form larger systems. Issues that may appear to be
local will often require solutions at the landscape and region scale—working
with the larger pattern, understanding how it works, and designing in harmony with it.
Following this reasoning, my task was to develop a geographical,
ecologically based system, which would classify the natural ecoregions of
the Earth and plot their distribution. The project built on work published by
John Crowley in 1967 (Crowley 1967). In 1989, I published a terrestrial
ecoregions map at a scale of 1:30,000,000 (Bailey 1989). A simplified,
reduced-scale version appears in my book Ecosystem Geography (Bailey
1996) and the 19th edition of Goode’s World Atlas. The influence of such
ecoregion mapping efforts on research and planning efforts has been considerable. For example, the National Science Foundation’s Long-Term Ecological Research program and The Nature Conservancy’s ecoregional planning
programs are taking place within the framework of this map. The Sierra Club
announced in 1994 (Sierra March–April 1994) a “critical ecoregions” program designed to protect and restore 21 regional ecosystems in the United
States and Canada. In another effort, the United States Forest Service has
adopted ecoregion units as part of an ecologically based mapping system to
support ecosystem management and assessment.
Understanding the continental systems requires a grasp of the ocean
systems that exert enormous influence on terrestrial climatic patterns. This
book is unique in the extended treatment (see Chaps. 2 and 3, and Plate 1) of
oceanic ecoregions.
Ecoregions is intended to provide detailed descriptions, illustrations, and
examples that will assist the user of the ecoregion maps in interpreting them.
It amplifies the necessarily brief descriptions of the ecoregion units which
appear in the legends to the maps. However, description without reference to
genesis or origin soon becomes dull and tiresome—terms which unfortunately characterize much of the ecological literature on regions. A major
objective of this book, therefore, is to suggest explanations of the
mechanisms which act to produce the world pattern of ecoregion distribution,
ix