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The California coastal sage and chaparral (Spanish: Salvia y chaparral costero de California) is a Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub ecoregion, defined by the World Wildlife Fund, located in southwestern California (United States) and northwestern Baja California . It is part of the larger California chaparral and woodlands ecoregion.
Chaparral in the Santa Ynez Mountains, near Santa Barbara, California. Chaparral (/ ˌ ʃ æ p ə ˈ r æ l, ˌ tʃ æ p-/ SHAP-ə-RAL, CHAP-) [1] is a shrubland plant community found primarily in California, southern Oregon, and the northern portion of the Baja California peninsula in Mexico.
Coastal sage scrub in the Santa Monica Mountains.Note slope effect. Coastal sage scrub on the Santa Rosa Plateau, with oak woodland in background.. Coastal sage scrub, also known as coastal scrub, CSS, or soft chaparral, is a low scrubland plant community of the California coastal sage and chaparral subecoregion, found in coastal California and northwestern coastal Baja California.
There are two types of chaparral: soft and hard chaparral. Hard chaparral is usually evergreen, located at higher elevation and is harder to walk through. Soft chaparral tends to be drought deciduous, live at lower elevations and tends to be easier to walk through. [citation needed]
In the middle Sierra, south to the Merced River, the lower montane forest has the same elevation, but precipitation decreases and the forest mixes with chaparral. [9] In the southern Sierra, the lower montane forest occurs between 3,000 to 5,000 feet (900 to 1,500 m), but can range as high as 6,000 feet (1,800 m), with ponderosa pine dominating ...
One common factor among chaparral, however, is that a minimum of 10 years is needed between fires for the chaparral to mature and set enough seed in the soil to create a fire resilient environment. As human activity increases the frequency of fires, the chaparral's ability to renew itself decreases, leading to elimination and degradation.
Montane chaparral is threatened chiefly by development, grazing, logging, conversion to vineyards, and too-frequent wildfire. [ 5 ] This is an ongoing threat notably in Southern California , but also in its northernmost reaches in Monterey County , where population pressure is most intense.
Very few places in the world have the Mediterranean climate of California. It is one of the more rare in the world, with only five locations: the Mediterranean Basin, Southwest Australia, the Cape Province—Western Cape of South Africa, the Chilean Matorral, and the California chaparral and woodlands ecoregion of California and the Baja California peninsula.