Bioregion

A bioregion is a geographical area, on land or at sea, defined not by administrative boundaries but by distinct characteristics such as plant and animal species, ecological systems, soils and landforms, human settlements and cultures those attributes give rise to, and topographic features such as watersheds.

[10][11] Within the life sciences, there are numerous methods used to define the physical limits of a bioregion based on the spatial extent of mapped ecological phenomena—from species distributions and hydrological systems (i.e. Watersheds) to topographic features (e.g. landforms) and climate zones (e.g. Köppen classification).

[12] A bioregion can also have a distinct cultural identity[13][8] defined, for example, by Indigenous Peoples whose historical, mythological and biocultural connections to their lands and waters shape an understanding of place and territorial extent.

[16][17] References to the term "bioregion" in scholarly literature have grown exponentially since the introduction of the term—from a single research paper in 1971 to approximately 65,000 journal articles and books published to date.

[19] The first confirmed use of the term "bioregion" in academic literature was by E. Jarowski in 1971, a marine biologist studying the blue crab populations of Louisiana.

The author used the term sensu stricto to refer to a "biological region"—the area within which a crab can be provided with all the resources needed throughout its entire life cycle.

[20] The term was quickly adopted by other biologists, but eventually took on a broader set of definitions to encompass a range of macroecological phenomena.

[27][28] Helping refine this definition, Author Kirkpatrick Sale wrote in 1974 that "a bioregion is a part of the earth's surface whose rough boundaries are determined by natural rather than human dictates, distinguishable from other areas by attributes of flora, fauna, water, climate, soils and landforms, and human settlements and cultures those attributes give rise to.

Several other marine biology papers picked up the term,[29][30][23] and in 1974 the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) published its first global-scale biogeographical map entitled "Biotic Provinces of the World".

[31] However, in their 1977 article "Reinhabiting California", director of the IUCN and founder of the Man and Biosphere project Raymond Dasmann and Peter Berg pushed back against these global bodies that were attempting to use the term bioregion in a strictly ecological sense, which separated humans from the ecosystems they lived in, specifically naming that Biotic Provinces of the World Map, was not a map of bioregions.

"This article defined bioregions as distinct from biogeographical and biotic provinces that ecologists and geographers had been developing by adding a human and cultural lens to the strictly ecological idea.

[37][38] A bioregion is defined along watershed and hydrological boundaries, and uses a combination of bioregional layers, beginning with the oldest "hard" lines; geology, topography, tectonics, wind, fracture zones and continental divides, working its way through the "soft" lines: living systems such as soil, ecosystems, climate, marine life, and the flora and fauna, and lastly the "human" lines: human geography, energy, transportation, agriculture, food, music, language, history, indigenous cultures, and ways of living within the context set into a place, and its limits to determine the final edges and boundaries.

First, we map the landforms, geology, climate, and hydrology, and how these environmental factors work together to create a common template for life in that particular place.

[21][23] In the article, Allen Van Newkirk defines a bioregion as:“Bioregions are tentatively defined as biologically significant areas of the Earth’s surface which can be mapped and discussed as distinct existing patterns of plant, animal, and habitat distributions as related to range patterns and… deformations, attributed to one or more successive occupying populations of the culture-bearing animal (aka humans)....Towards this end a group of projects relating to bioregions or themes of applied human biogeography is envisaged.

[22] This idea was carried forward and developed by ecologist Raymond Dasmann and Peter Berg in article they co-authored called Reinhabiting California in 1977, which rebuked earlier ecologist efforts to only use biotic provinces, and biogeography which excluded humans from the definition of bioregion.,[44][45][46][47] Peter Berg and Judy Goldhaft founded the Planet Drum foundation in 1973,[48][43] located in San Francisco and which just celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2023.

The borders between such areas are usually not rigid – nature works with more flexibility and fluidity than that – but the general contours of the regions themselves are not hard to identify, and indeed will probably be felt, understood, sensed or in some way known to many inhabitants, and particularly those still rooted in the land.

During the 1960s, he worked at the Conservation Foundation in Washington, D.C., as Director of International Programs and was also a consultant on the development of the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment.

[53][54] Working with Peter Berg, and also contemporary with Allen Van Newkirk, Dasmann was one of the pioneers in developing the definition for the term "Bioregion", as well as conservation concepts of "Eco-development" and "biological diversity," and identified the crucial importance of recognizing indigenous peoples and their cultures in efforts to conserve natural landscapes.

Less cloudy skies in the Southwest's sparsely vegetated Sonoran Desert Bioregion make direct solar energy a more plentiful alternative there.

Bioregional maps and atlases can be considered tools and jumping off points for helping guide regenerative activities of a community.

[61] This is put well by Douglas Aberley and chief Michael George noting that: "Once the bioregional map atlas is completed it becomes the common foundation of knowledge from which planning scenarios can be prepared, and decisions ultimately made.

[11] Ecoregions cover relatively large areas of land or water, and contain characteristic, geographically distinct assemblages of natural communities and species.

[112] The phrase "ecological region" was widely used throughout the 20th century by biologists and zoologists to define specific geographic areas in research.

Subsequent regional papers by the co-authors covering Africa, Indo-Pacific, and Latin America differentiate between ecoregions and bioregions, referring to the latter as "geographic clusters of ecoregions that may span several habitat types, but have strong biogeographic affinities, particularly at taxonomic levels higher than the species level (genus, family)".

[87] Using recent advances in satellite imagery the ecoregion perimeters were refined and the total number reduced to 846 (and later 844), which can be explored on a web application developed by Resolve and Google Earth Engine.

[123] The Cascadia Bioregion encompasses all of the state of Washington, all but the southeastern corner of Idaho, and portions of Oregon, California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, Alaska, Yukon, and British Columbia.

Bioregions are geographically based areas defined by land or soil composition, watershed, climate, flora, and fauna.

The Cascadia Bioregion stretches along the entire watershed of the Columbia River (as far as the Continental Divide), as well as the Cascade Range from Northern California well into Canada.