The largest temperate-zone rainforest on Earth, running along the west-facing coastal mountains from Kodiak Island in Alaska to northern California through British Columbia, Washington and Oregon. Heavy winter rain and summer fog drip keep the forest floor consistently moist beneath a canopy of Coast Douglas-fir, Sitka spruce, western hemlock and western redcedar, with dense understories of moss and fern and fallen nurse logs that seed the next generation of trees. Notable expanses survive in Olympic and Mount Rainier National Parks and in British Columbia's Great Bear Rainforest, the world's largest tract of old-growth temperate rainforest; the ecoregion's Northern California reaches hold the coast redwood, the world's tallest tree species, and salmon, spotted owls and marbled murrelets all depend on intact old growth. Much of the original old-growth forest outside protected areas has already been logged. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Facts
Classification
Biogeographic Realm Protected Status Area (sq km) Connections
Demonstrates
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica
Hosts
Source World Wildlife Fund
Source World Wildlife Fund
In Biome
Source World Wildlife Fund
Open Questions
Source Pacific Temperate Rainforests (Wikipedia)
Sources
1. Pacific Temperate Rainforests (Wikipedia)
WikipediaPacific temperate rainforests subsection
The Northern California coastal forests are home to the Coast Redwood (Sequoia sempervirens), the world's tallest tree.
- Biogeographic realm: nearctic (derived from location stated in entity description)
Protected status (stated plainly in the entity own recorded description)
Notable expanses survive in Olympic and Mount Rainier National Parks and in British Columbia's Great Bear Rainforest, the world's largest tract of old-growth temperate rainforest; the ecoregion's Northern California reaches hold the coast redwood, the world's tallest tree species, and salmon, spotted owls and marbled murrelets all depend on intact old growth.
View the Source 2. Largest Temperate Rainforest (Guinness World Records)
Guinness World RecordsRecord description, area figureQuote, Record description, area figure
The largest expanse of temperate rainforest on Earth is the Pacific Temperate Rainforests, which cover around 295,000 square km of the west coasts of the USA and Canada.
View the Source World Wildlife Fund
World Wildlife Fund- In Biome: Temperate Rainforest
- Hosts: Douglas Fir
- Hosts: Grizzly Bear
View the Source Encyclopaedia Britannica
Open Questions (1 open question)
What is the total area of the Pacific temperate rainforest?
This atlas's own cited Wikipedia article and the WWF classification both describe the Pacific temperate rainforest as the world's largest temperate rainforest, but the region is mapped as several separate ecoregions (Northern Pacific coastal forests, British Columbia mainland coastal forests, Central Pacific coastal forests, Klamath-Siskiyou forests and others), each carrying its own area figure in reference sources. No live source found states one combined total for the whole region, and summing the separate ecoregion figures ourselves would be this atlas's own calculation rather than an attested figure taken from a source.
What would resolve this A single authoritative source (WWF or a peer-reviewed biogeography reference) that states one combined total area for the Pacific temperate rainforest as a single region, or that explicitly names which ecoregions such a total should sum.
Physical geography / biogeographyPacific Temperate Rainforests (Wikipedia)
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