MAP OF ECOREGIONS OF NORTH CAROLINA AND SOUTH CAROLINA
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Description:
Ecoregions denote areas of general similarity in ecosystems and in the type, quality, and quantity of environmental resources. They are designed to serve as a spatial framework for the research, assessment, management, and monitoring of ecosystems and ecosystem components. Ecoregions are directly applicable to many state agency activities, including the selection of regional stream reference sites, the development of biological criteria and water quality standards, and the establishment of management goals for nonpoint-source pollution. They are also relevant to integrated ecosystem management, an ultimate goal of many federal and state resource management agencies. The approach used to compile this map of North and South Carolina is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of the patterns of biotic and abiotic phenomena that reflect differences in ecosystem quality and integrity. These phenomena include geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. The relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another regardless of the hierarchical level. A Roman numeral hierarchical scheme has been adopted for different levels of ecological regions. Level I and Level II divide the North American continent into 15 and 52 regions, respectively. At Level III, the continental United States contains 104 regions. Level IV is a further subdivision of the Level III ecoregions. Ecological and biological diversity of the Carolinas is enormous. The two states contain barrier islands and coastal lowlands, large river floodplain forests, rolling plains and plateaus, forested mountains, and a variety of aquatic habitats. There are 5 Level III ecoregions (Blue Ridge, Piedmont, Southeastern Plains, Middle Atlantic Coastal Plain, and Southern Coastal Plain) and 29 Level IV ecoregions in North and South Carolina and most continue into ecologically similar parts of adjacent states. The map of Level III and IV ecoregions of the Carolinas was compiled at a scale of 1:250,000; it depicts revisions and subdivisions of earlier Level III ecoregions that were originally compiled at a smaller scale. Compilation of the map poster is part of a collaborative project primarily between the U.S. Department ofAgriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service, the U.S. EPA National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory, U.S. EPA Region IV, the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources, and the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control. This project is also associated with an interagency effort to develop a common framework of ecological regions for the US. Reaching that objective requires recognition of the differences in the conceptual approaches and mapping methodologies applied to develop the most common ecoregion-type frameworks, including those developed by the USFS and the NRCS. As each of these frameworks is further refined, their differences are becoming less discernible. Regional collaborative projects such as these in North and South Carolina, where some agreement has been reached among multiple resource management agencies, are a step toward attaining consensus and consistency in ecoregion frameworks for the entire nation.