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The California coastal sage and chaparral (Spanish: Salvia y chaparral costero de California) is a Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub ecoregion, defined by the World Wildlife Fund, located in southwestern California (United States) and northwestern Baja California . It is part of the larger California chaparral and woodlands ecoregion.
Chaparral in the Santa Ynez Mountains, near Santa Barbara, California. Chaparral (/ ˌ ʃ æ p ə ˈ r æ l, ˌ tʃ æ p-/ SHAP-ə-RAL, CHAP-) [1] is a shrubland plant community found primarily in California, in southern Oregon and in the northern portion of the Baja California Peninsula in Mexico.
Chaparral, like most Mediterranean shrublands, is highly fire resilient and historically burned with high-severity, stand replacing events every 30 to 100 years. [2] Historically, Native Americans burned chaparral to promote grasslands for textiles and food. [ 3 ]
The California interior chaparral and woodlands ecoregion covers 24,900 square miles (64,000 km 2) in an elliptical ring around the California Central Valley. It occurs on hills and mountains ranging from 300 feet (91 m) to 3,000 feet (910 m).
Coastal sage scrub in the Santa Monica Mountains.Note slope effect. Coastal sage scrub on the Santa Rosa Plateau, with oak woodland in background.. Coastal sage scrub, also known as coastal scrub, CSS, or soft chaparral, is a low scrubland plant community of the California coastal sage and chaparral subecoregion, found in coastal California and northwestern coastal Baja California.
Very few places in the world have the Mediterranean climate of California. It is one of the more rare in the world, with only five locations: the Mediterranean Basin, Southwest Australia, the Cape Province—Western Cape of South Africa, the Chilean Matorral, and the California chaparral and woodlands ecoregion of California and the Baja California peninsula.
The montane chaparral consists of a mosaic of sage scrub, chaparral, and montane species, depending on altitude. [9] The California interior chaparral and woodlands form a ring around the Central Valley , covering the hills around the Bay Area as well as the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. [ 10 ]
The California montane chaparral and woodlands is an ecoregion defined by the World Wildlife Fund, spanning 7,900 square miles (20,000 km 2) of mountains in the Transverse Ranges, Peninsular Ranges, and Coast Ranges of southern and central California.