Ecoregions

Ecoregions are geographic areas delineated by climate, geology, hydrology, wildlife, and existing plant communities. To put it simply, where ecosystems are similar. This zone mapping started in the 1980s in collaboration with the EPA to help enable ecosystem management strategies across many different organizations doing related work.

Some non-governmental organizations like the WWF and The Nature Conservancy have also defined their own Ecoregions. These maps sometimes go into more detail.

Grow Native Mass has created a more detailed view of the Commonwealth, showing 8 distinct regions.

Ecoregions of North America map by Canada, Mexico, and USA. Level III view.

The Ecoregions of North America map which was created by federal authorities in Canada, Mexico, and USA and only has 3 ecoregions in Massachusetts at a level III view. It goes into more detail with a level IV view, showing 16 distinct areas.

Boundaries of ecoregions generally do not follow state lines, and some ecoregions spread over vast areas such as the Northeastern Coastal ecoregion (or North Atlantic Pine Barrens) stretching from southern New Jersey to Cape Cod. I grew up off the coast of Massachusetts and marveled as I traveled to Long Island and all the way down to Cape May that it still looked like home!

It’s so interesting to see evidence of geologic events and the movement of water have shaped huge areas of land. In the case of New Hampshire and Vermont, boundary follows the Connecticut River. Why? Because about 400 million years ago what would be Vermont was the coast of the continent and what would be New Hampshire broke off from the proto-European continent, crossed the ocean and slammed into this coast! The Green Mountains were formed by this event, layers of bedrock folded up on one another. For more of this interesting story, read this article, it goes into depth about how these geological events actually shape the character and industry of the states today.

There are also Biomes and Bioregions, which are exactly the same concept of what we’ve been talking about but zoomed out to a global scale and far less specific. Like Tundra, Taiga, Desert, Tropical Rainforest, Grassland and Deciduous Forest. Do those sound familar? I think I’m having flashbacks to 7th grade science class. Bioregions are a little more specific than Biomes, but they are defined by only a few organizations and for a few different reasons.

And Ecotones…? Don’t worry, it’s not another way to define areas! Ecotones are the edges where different ecosystems meet. And the edge is where the action is, where biodiversity is increased and more abundant because diversity of environment is more varied and species overlap creating more interconnected relationships.

When we know our Ecoregion and our specific ecosystems, we can better adapt our land management and stewarding strategies to best serve our needs alongside those of our environment. Where are you in these categories?

If you found this post interesting and informative, perhaps you will also be curious to find out Whose Land You Are On at native-land.ca. If we compare the above maps and what we know about ecoregions to the lands inhabited by Indigenous Peoples prior to colonization, do we see that the original stewards of these lands were perhaps specialized and adapted to their environment?