© Pete Saloutos/Panoramic Images (Maine Title Image Large)
Ecoregions in Maine
© Heather Perry Ecoregions in Maine Featured Image
What are ecoregions?
Ecoregions reflect broad ecological patterns occurring on the landscape. In general, each ecoregion has a distinctive composition and pattern of plant and animal species distribution. Abiotic factors, such as climate, landform, soil, and hydrology are important in the development of ecosystems, and thus help define ecoregions. Within an individual ecoregion, the ecological relationships between species and their physical environment are essentially similar.
Why use ecoregions?
Using ecoregions as a framework for assessing the distribution and status of species and ecosystems makes biological sense, compared to using politically derived lines like county, state or national boundaries. Ecoregions also provide an ecological basis for partitioning the state into subunits for conservation planning purposes.
Ecoregions in Maine
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Northern Appalachian-Acadian Ecoregion
The Northern Appalachian-Acadian Ecoregion extends from the Tug Hill and Adirondack ranges of New York, across the Green Mountains of Vermont and the White Mountains of New Hampshire, into Maine and Maritime Canada.
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North Atlantic Coast Ecoregion
The North Atlantic Coast Ecoregion (NAC) consists of parts of nine states (DE, PA, NJ, NY, CT, RI, MA, NH, ME) and their near shore marine waters. The land and freshwater component of the ecoregion encompasses 12.7 million acres in a narrow band from the southwestern shore of Delaware Bay north to Pemaquid Point in Maine.
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Lower New England-Northern Piedmont
Stretching from southern Maine and New Hampshire through western Massachusetts and Connecticut, Vermont, and eastern New York, the Lower New England-Northern Piedmont includes, all told, portions of 12 states -- and the District of Columbia.
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