List of ecoregions (WWF)
The WWF ecoregions were published by the U.S. section of the World Wildlife Fund as a model of global ecoregions from conservation point of view in 2001. Published in 2004 a revised version.
The WWF classification defines an ecoregion as " relatively large area of the earth's surface, which can be defined geographically by the potential composition of species, biotic communities and environmental conditions facing major changes in land use ." As with all biogeographic models here also an artificial boundaries, because the transitions between regions are in fact more or less fluently.
In contrast to traditional ecoregion - term, which is solely defined by the shape of its plant formations (and thus largely synonymous with the biome - term ), based the WWF model on a combination of different biogeographic concepts.
- 5.1 Nearctic region of North America
- 5.2 Palearctic region of Eurasia
Derivation
An essential work base for the WWF were the model 1975 by Miklos Udvardy for the IUCN and in 1979, developed by Evelyn Crystal Pielou systems biogeographic regions whose boundaries were already created for the needs of global nature conservation planning. The models by Eric Dinerstein et al ( 1995) and Taylor Ricketts were also used, among others, the aforementioned authors had been on a combination of the shape of the ( initially present ) vegetation types and the particular species composition of floras and Faunenreiche.
In a ten- year process with the involvement of hundreds of different experts so was an exemplary system 825 Country ecoregions ( terrestrial) that ( formative main biomes ) and seven biogeographic realms are divided 14 " Major habitat types". [Note 1] Also new is the definition of other 426 freshwater ecoregions and 232 marine ecoregions.
Objectives
The WWF ecoregions were developed to assign biological analyzes ( particularly for biodiversity and biodiversity) concrete and meaningful selected areas can. They should therefore be made comparable from a conservation point of view: How can define representative habitats, develop conservation strategies more easily and identify shortcomings.
From inception, therefore, the inclusion of the current state (status) due to the anthropogenic influence was decisive. Thus, a largely free ecoregion represents the original ecosystems. In areas with varying degrees of hemeroby (deviation by culturing ) the description of the ecoregion corresponds to the ideal model for nature conservation.
These models include the following criteria:
- Species richness
- Endemic species
- Unique genera, families, relict species, rare habitat types and the like
- Extraordinary ecological or evolutionary phenomena (eg, Moore, large wintering areas for many species of birds and the like. )
- Global rarity of the major habitat types
The WWF terrestrial ecoregions
- First sorting criterion for the ecoregions are the main biomes "Tundra ", " Taiga ", " desert ", etc, which are subdivided partly again on the name of the region, such as " polar desert " as a subset of the "Tundra ". ( the main biomes are comparable to Zonobiomen by Walter & Breckle ).
- Second sorting criterion are the biogeographical realms " Nearctic Region ", " Australasian region " etc. (similar to Faunenreichen ) in communication with the respective continents.
- Third sorting criterion is the location of the ecoregions that are sorted here (different from the WWF - sorting) from the north, starting " in the read direction " from west to east.
Tundra
Nearctic region of North America
Palearctic region of Eurasia
(*) The WWF comes to this region on an apparently poorer ↓ or ↑ to better estimate than the studies' Last of the Wild " or" Intact forest landscapes " that are based on extensive data collection (see cartographic implementation in the article wilderness )
Australasian region of Australia
Antarctic region
Boreal Forest / Taiga
Nearctic region of North America
(*) The WWF comes to this region on an apparently poorer ↓ or ↑ to better estimate than the studies' Last of the Wild " or" Intact forest landscapes " that are based on extensive data collection (see cartographic implementation in the article wilderness )
Palearctic region of Eurasia
(*) The WWF comes to this region on an apparently poorer ↓ or ↑ to better estimate than the studies' Last of the Wild " or" Intact forest landscapes " that are based on extensive data collection (see cartographic implementation in the article wilderness )