Northern California coastal forests
Encyclopedia : N : NO : NOR : Northern California coastal forests
The Northern California coastal forests are a temperate coniferous forests ecoregion of coastal Northern California, USA. The ecoregion is lies close to the Pacific Ocean, and is kept moist by Pacific Ocean storms during the winter months, and by coastal fogs in the summer months. The ecoregion covers 13,300 km² (5,100 square miles), extending from Del Norte County on the California-Oregon border south to Santa Cruz County. The ecoregion rarely extends more than 65 km inland from the coast.
The ecoregion is characterized by the Coast Redwood (Sequoia sempervirens); redwood forests are interspersed with several other plant communities, including northern coastal grasslands and northern coastal scrub in the immediate coastal zone and on hilltops, mixed evergreen forests of Coast Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii var. menziesii), Tanoak (Lithocarpus densiflorus), Pacific Madrone (Arbutus menziesii), and California Bay Laurel (Umbellularia californica) on drier slopes, and enclaves of closed-cone pine forests which include Bishop Pine (Pinus muricata) and Knobcone Pine (Pinus attenuata).
External links
- [Northern California coastal forests (World Wildlife Fund)]
- [Sempervirens Fund]
- [Northern California Coastal Forests images at bioimages.vanderbilt.edu] ([slow modem version])
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.