If you are asking yourself, What is a bioregion and who cares anyway? read my last post on bioregionalism here.
There happens to be a lot information on the web about the Cascadia bioregion, which follows the Cascade Mountain range, stretching from Alaska down into California and east into Montana and Idaho. With a google search I found maps, a myspace as well as a tribe group... Cascadia is even listed in wikipedia.
I found information posted by Ethan Roland of AppleSeed Permaculture about my neighbor to the north, New York, part of the Hudson Valley watershed... In his document- Northeast Permaculture and Beyond: An Organizational Vision, January 25th 2006- Ethan roughly defines this bioregion as being composed of the 10 counties on either side of the Hudson River from Albany in the north to New York City in the south.
Props to Ethan for representing the northeast...
But I can't seem to find solid information as to the bioregion of my current home, central New Jersey. I think I have finally pinned down that New Jersey belongs to the Atlantic Ocean watershed, so does that mean that we are in the Atlantic Ocean bioregion? And if so, who else do we share it with? Looking through this List of ecoregions New Jersey seems also to be a part of the Eastern Temperate Forest, the Atlantic Coastal Pine Barrens, and perhaps the Northeastern Coastal Zone.
I would also like to find a map that shows the different bioregions of the Americas, and the world. It seems sad to me that I cannot easily find this information, and I would like to change that.
In my quest for the name of my bioregional home, this is a request for maps or links or any information from anyone who may know...
What bioregion does New Jersey belong to?
Ethan's links to permaculture resources in the northeast:
Northeastern Permaculture Wikispace: www.northeasternpermaculture.wikispaces.com
Hudson Valley Permaculture (NY): www.hudsonvalleypermaculture.org
Finger Lakes Permaculture Institute (NY): www.flpci.org
Hancock Permaculture Center (NY): www.hancockpermaculture.org
D Acres Organic Farm and Educational Homestead (NH): www.dacres.org
Green Mountain Permaculture (VT): www.greenmountainpermaculture.com
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4 comments:
On the NJ bioregion question, see: http://ecotips.sustainablelawrence.org/2008/10/students-arent-only-ones-who-should.html and
http://ecotips.sustainablelawrence.org/2008/09/going-native-in-nj.html
Having hiked the AT through that whole state, I have opinions. Chances are NJ is best broken into about 5 natural bioregions. You have the heavily urbanized Passaic Bergen area in the NE that should include corresponding parts of SW NY, and is on the Hudson; you have the low mountains and lakes around High Point; the Raritan watershed, then the central river valley that pours a ton of drainages around the Toms R. down to the coast. You have a long coastal bioregion with its distinctive wildlife, and then you have the SW area, verging on the Delaware Water Gap, which probably should include parts of Delaware and Maryland also.
Morris/Essex/Union/Middlesex/Somerset are a complex ecosystem, but similarities exist. I would be inclined to call it the Passaic River Bioregion. Monmouth/Ocean/Atlantic/Cape May are also all of a ken. Deleware River Bioregion could encompass anything that drains into that, backing all the way up to Lake Hopatcong.
A bunch of folks using some good data arrived at a division of the earth surface into 867 ecoregions based on climate and dominanat biota. It is a useful framework.
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/wildworld
livestake@gmail.com
Thank you for both your responses.
The national geographic link sent by 'anonymous' is pretty cool and worth checking out. It took me some time to find the New Jersey ecoregions because it wouldn't search by my home zip code, so I had to zoom in and move and zoom in and move the world map until I found the location I was looking for. It describes the characteristics of the ecoregion and includes "Special Features" and "Causes For Concerns".
Christopher-Robin Healy from Cloudburst Cultivated Ecology/Clearlight Permaculture says bioregions do not have political borders, ie county or state borders. SUNYAlbany did work on this in the early 1990s. Turns out that Albany is in the middle of a bioregion that includes Lake George and parts of the Berkshires, but nothing south of Ravena, NY. As an interesting side note, the Hudson and part of the Champlain drainage systems are within a mile of each other in Glens Falls, NY. Lake George, "Queen of American Lakes" (according to Thomas Jefferson)drains North.
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