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The deserts in California receive between 2 and 10 inches (51 and 254 mm) of rain per year. [6] Plants in these deserts are brush and scrub, adapted to the low rainfall. Common plant species include creosote bush, blackbrush, greasewood, saltbush, big sagebrush, low sagebrush, and shadscale. [6]
The California Central Valley grasslands ecoregion, as well as the coniferous Sierra Nevada forests, Northern California coastal forests, and Klamath-Siskiyou forests of northern California and southwestern Oregon, share many plant and animal affinities with the California chaparral and woodlands.
The mixed evergreen forests of the Klamath Mountains-Siskiyou Mountains occur above 300 meters (1000 ft) elevation, and are of four main types. Douglas-fir forests are found on gentle slopes, north-facing slopes, ridges with deep soil, and river terraces with deep sediments, usually underlain with sedimentary rocks.
A ravine is a landform that is narrower than a canyon and is often the product of streambank erosion. Ravines are typically classified as larger in scale than gullies, although smaller than valleys. [1] Ravines may also be called a cleuch, dell, ghout , gill or ghyll, glen, gorge, kloof (South Africa), and chine (Isle of Wight)
The western and eastern Sierra Nevada have substantially different species of plants and animals, because the east lies in the rain shadow of the crest. The plants and animals in the east are thus adapted to much drier conditions. [4] The altitudes listed for the biotic zones are for the central Sierra Nevada.
California is in one of the world’s 36 biodiversity hot spots and is home to more than 6,000 types of native plants, including hundreds of wildflower species. Only a few other places on Earth ...
Of California's total plant population, 2,153 species, subspecies, and varieties are endemic and native to California alone, according to the 1993 Jepson Manual study. [4] This botanical diversity stems not only from the size of the state, but also its diverse topographies , climates, and soils (e.g. serpentine outcrops ).
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.