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REGIONALIZATION OF THE WESTERN CORN BELT PLAINS ECOREGION
Citation:
Bernert, J., J. Eilers, W. Ripple, AND K. Freemark. REGIONALIZATION OF THE WESTERN CORN BELT PLAINS ECOREGION. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, D.C., EPA/600/R-94/037.
Description:
As part of a larger effort to study the fate and transport of agrichemicals in the midwestern United States, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency commissioned a study of spatial variability within the Western Corn Belt Plains ecoregion. he objective of this study was to systematically partition the study area into subregions that best reflected the ecological diversity of the region. rocess was developed which relied to a large degree on small-scale digital data to quantify spatial concordance among data sets, group data sets into related themes, assign boundaries based on spatially-variable contingency statements, and reflect the uncertainty in transition zones between subregions using variable width boundaries. he methodology was used to divide the study area into subregions that exhibited different degrees of heterogeneity. ome of the most prominent ecological units were identified on the basis of surficial geology, soils, vegetation, and land use. he systematic methodology used here offers advantages over some previous methods for identifying ecological regions in that the results from the systematic approach can be reproduced, the boundaries between ecological units can be revised based on new or more accurate data, the process of delineating boundaries requires explicit choices in selecting important ecological processes, and transition zones between regions can be quantified.