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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.
[6] [7] Desert chaparral is a regional ecosystem subset of the deserts and xeric shrublands biome, with some plant species from the California chaparral and woodlands ecoregion. Unlike cismontane chaparral, which forms dense, impenetrable stands of plants, desert chaparral is often open, with only about 50% of the ground covered. [ 8 ]
Montane chaparral and woodlands in the Santa Ynez Mountains, near Santa Barbara, California. Most of the population of California and Baja California lives in these ecoregions, which includes the San Francisco Bay Area, Ventura County, the Greater Los Angeles Area, San Diego County, Tijuana, and Ensenada, Baja California.
One common factor among chaparral, however, is that a minimum of 10 years is needed between fires for the chaparral to mature and set enough seed in the soil to create a fire resilient environment. As human activity increases the frequency of fires, the chaparral's ability to renew itself decreases, leading to elimination and degradation.
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.
In the middle Sierra, south to the Merced River, the lower montane forest has the same elevation, but precipitation decreases and the forest mixes with chaparral. [9] In the southern Sierra, the lower montane forest occurs between 3,000 to 5,000 feet (900 to 1,500 m), but can range as high as 6,000 feet (1,800 m), with ponderosa pine dominating ...
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]
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.