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MAP OF ECOREGIONS OF KENTUCKY
Citation:
Description:
The ecoregions of Kentucky have been identified, mapped, and described and provide a geographic structure for environmental resources research, assessment, monitoring, and management. This project is part of a larger effort by the U.S. EPA to create a national, hierarchical ecoregion framework. This ecoregion framework is methodologically consistent with those developed elsewhere by the U.S. EPA and allows biologists and resource managers to share and compare environmental data across political boundaries. The amount of environmental detail that is delineated at different hierarchical levels varies from level I, the broadest grouping, to level IV, the most detailed. This project refined and subdivided the level III ecological regions of Kentucky. It involved researchers from the USEPA National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory (Corvallis, Oregon), USEPA Region IV, U.S. Department of Agriculture-U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Department of Interior-Geological Survey Earth Resources Observation Systems Data Center, Kentucky Geological Survey, The Nature Conservancy, Eastern Kentucky University, Kentucky Department for Environmental Protection, and several other Commonwealth of Kentucky agencies. It will be published as a double-sided, color poster by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and will measure 34 x 44 inches. The poster includes an original 1:1,000,000 scale map that delineates the seven level III ecological regions and 25 level IV ecoregions of Kentucky. Each ecoregion is described in the accompanying text and tables. Nine other posters in the ecoregion series have already been published by the USGS and cover fourteen states. Level IV ecoregion frameworks have been developed by the US EPA for Alabama, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, Maryland, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin, West Virginia and parts of Mississippi, Oregon, and Washington; other projects are in progress for Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, Wyoming and the remainder of Oregon and Washington.