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ECOREGIONS OF COLORADO
Citation:
CHAPMAN, S. S., G. E. GRIFFITH, J. M. OMERNIK, A. B. PRICE, J. FREEOUF, AND D. L. SCHRUPP. ECOREGIONS OF COLORADO. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, EPA/600/C-05/008, 2005.
Impact/Purpose:
To create a national, hierarchical ecoregion framework.
Description:
The ecoregions of Colorado 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.
The Colorado project refined and subdivided the level III ecological regions of Iowa and Missouri. It involved researchers from U.S. EPA National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory, Corvallis, USEPA Region X, Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE), Colorado Division of Wildlife (CDOW), United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service (USFS), United States Department of Agriculture?Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), United States Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and United States Department of the Interior, Geological Survey (USGS), Earth Resources Observation Systems (EROS) Data Center. The refined Colorado ecoregions 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 1:1,200,000 scale map that delineates the six level III and thirty-five level IV ecoregions of Colorado. Each ecoregion is described in the accompanying text and tables.
Level IV ecoregion frameworks have been developed by the US EPA for Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Maryland, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Road Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Wyoming, and western Washington.