Ecozone

A biogeographical realm or ecozone is a biogeographical and ecological land classification system of the world first formally proposed by Miklos Udvardy in 1975 for conservation purposes. Arguably, biomes are better suited for conservational purposes.

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8 biogeographical realms with unifying features of geography, fauna and flora are defined.

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• Nearctic 22.9 mil. km² (including most of North America)
• Palearctic 54.1 mil. km² (including the bulk of Eurasia and North Africa)
• Afrotropic 22.1 mil. km² (including Sub-Saharan Africa)
• Indomalaya 7.5 mil. km² (including the South Asian subcontinent and Southeast Asia)
• Australasia 7.7 mil. km² (including Australia, New Guinea, and neighbouring islands)
• Neotropic 19.0 mil. km² (including South America and the Caribbean)
• Oceania 1.0 mil. km² (including Polynesia, Fiji and Micronesia)
• Antarctic 0.3 mil. km² (including Antarctica)

Udvardy originally further divided the biogeographic realms into 203 biogeographical provinces (floral "regions" and faunal "provinces").

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Intensive regional analyses of biodiversity patterns across five continents and biogeographical realms have been used by the World Wildlife Fund to defined the boundaries of terrestrial ecoregions for the Global 200.

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The biogeographic realms are also supporting current natural World Heritage sites.

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Ecozone: References ►



 

Biogeographical: REDIRECT biogeography...

Ecological land classification: Ecological land classification is defined as being a cartographical delineation of distinct ecological areas, identified by their geology, topography, soils, vegetation, climate conditions, living species, water resources, as well as anthropic factors. These factors are known to control or influence...

Miklos Udvardy: Miklos Dezso Ferenc Udvardy (March 23, 1919 ? January 27, 1998) was a biologist and biogeographer. He was born on March 23, 1919 in Debrecen, Hungary to Miklos Udvardy and Elizabeth Komlossy. Despite an early interest in birds, his father encouraged him to study law, but later went on to earn a doct...