Ecological zone

IZETA, ANDRES DARIO

Encyclopedia of Geography

SAGE

Año: 2010; p. 1 - 1

An ecological zone is a landscape unit usually associated to a region that reunites certain animal and plant communities (biocenosis) that are related with a particular historical formation, spatial patterns and environmental conditions as a part of a system. The definition of an ecological zone relies on flexible criteria, although humidity and altitude are key factors to define terrestrial ecological zones, and salinity and depth are key factors for maritime and continental water environments. Temperature is one of the elements that affect those environments. All of these factors, together with territory configuration, hydrologic regime, organic matter, mineral content, and isotopic composition of soil or water, define in a more nuanced manner each ecological zone and their buffer areas. The notion of ecological zone can be associated with other landscape ecology concepts as ecotope, biome and niche. An ecotope is defined as a pure land unit of the lowest rank (Zonneveld, 1989) related with a homogeneous landscape. On the other hand niche is the species or populations position on a biome. Lastly biome is defined as a land unit characterized by similar climatic and geographic conditions which correlates with specific plants and animal communities. Often Biomes are defined by the characteristics of the most popular plants (e.g. trees defines forests, grasses defines grasslands, etc). All of these follow the criteria of a hierarchical classification of landscape units. However, an ecological zone has a broader scope than does ecotope, as it is not necessary defined by a homogeneous landscape. On the other hand, unlike biome, ecological zones take into account not only the living communities but also their geographical setting. Lastly, an ecological zone has a regional scale, making it much broader than the concept of niche. Hence, Ecological Zone is based in the concept of a whole functional system from a and historical perspective instead of giving more importance to biotic or abiotic factors. As the categories above note, an ecological zone becomes a part of the landscape ecology terminology.