Ecoregions and Biomes of the World

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Have you ever imagined what a map of the Earth would look like using natural rather than political boundaries?

The map below, created by ecoregions depicts the 846 ecoregions representing our living planet. Ecoregions are ecosystems of regional extent. These are color coded on this map to highlight their distribution and the biological diversity they represent. This new map is based on recent advances in biogeography – the science concerning the distribution of plants and animals. The original ecoregions map has been widely used since its introduction in 2001, underpinning the most recent analyses of the effects of global climate change on nature by ecologists to the distribution of the world’s beetles to modern conservation planning. In the same vein, our updated ecoregions can now be used to chart progress towards achieving the visionary goal of Nature Needs Half, to protect half of all the land on Earth from saving a living terrestrial biosphere.

A biome is a community of plants and animals living together in a particular climate. There are 14 terrestrial biomes. Seven are forested, and 7 are not forested. Plant communities in the same biome can appear quite similar in structure but contain very different species. To better illustrate, click on the feature that depicts the eight biogeographic realms. An ecoregion in eastern Peru (Neotropical realm) could look very similar to one in the lowland Borneo (Indo-Malayan realm), but the plants and animals would be different.

How can we save life on Earth? It happens within each community, ecoregion, and country as we choose to leave room for nature to thrive. This map charts our progress.

Scientists now believe that to avoid the worst of the current extinction crisis to keep temperatures rising below 2°C and also avoid negative bio-spheric feedback, as much as 50% of the land and seas must be kept natural. We can convert the ecoregions map into a tool for measuring our progress towards the goal of half-protected where lands could be under various forms of conservation management and ownership, from a government to indigenous peoples’ or privately held lands. The map presented here intersects the amount of habitat now protected, and the amount of unprotected habitat remaining that could be brought under conservation.