Blogs posted for marine ecoregions:
- An ancient mariner on South Africa’s Agulhas Bank (April 2016)
An interesting paper provides a map of the marine coastal shelf ecoregions of the world which are at a geographic scale similar to their terrestrial ecoregions and potentially would seem to be similarly useful for ecoregion birders. The 2007 paper is “Marine ecoregions of the World: a bioregionalization of coastal and shelf areas” by Mark D. Spalding, et al. (+14 other authors), BioScience, Vol. 57 (7): 573-583. This effort was led by WWF and TNC scientists. The map below is scanned from that publication and shows the ecoregions of North America:
The North American ecoregions are the following (realms are in bold face, provinces in italics):
Arctic
Arctic (no provinces identified)
5. Northern Grand Banks–Southern Labrador
6. Northern Labrador
7. Baffin Bay–Davis Strait
8. Hudson Complex
9. Lancaster Sound
10. High Arctic Archipelago
11. Beaufort–Amundsen–Viscount Melville–Queen Maud
12. Beaufort Sea—continental coast and shelf
13. Chukchi Sea
14. Eastern Bering Sea
Temperate North Atlantic
Cold Temperate Northwest Atlantic
38. Southern Grand Banks–South Newfoundland
Warm Temperate Northwest Atlantic
- Carolinian
- Northern Gulf of Mexico
Temperate Northern Pacific
Cold Temperate Northeast Pacific
53. Aleutian Islands
54. Gulf of Alaska
55. North American Pacific Fijordland
56. Puget Trough/Georgia Basin
57. Oregon, Washington, Vancouver Coast and Shelf
58. Northern California
Warm Temperate Northeast Pacific
59. Southern California Bight
60. Cortezian
61. Magdalena Transition
Tropical Atlantic
Tropical Northwestern Atlantic
62. Bermuda
63. Bahamian
70. Floridian