At the middle school and high school level, biology textbooks usually have a section on biomes, which are large regions of the Earth that have distinctive communities of plants and animals. Examples of biomes include desert, tropical rainforest, temperate grasslands, and tundra. These biomes can be subdivided into smaller ecoregions, which have more specific assemblages of plant and animal types.

The World Wildlife Fund and National Geographic have teamed up to create Wild World, an online mapping program that has the world divided up into 867 ecoregions. Examples of ecoregions include:

In Romania–

• Central European mixed forest
• Carpathian montane coniferous forest
• East European forest steppe
• Pannonian mixed forest
• Pontic steppe

Each of these has a unique combination of plants and animals.

The native ecoregions in my home state of Montana (God’s country) include:

• Northern Short grasslands
• Montana valley and foothills grasslands
• South central Rockies forest
• North central Rockies forest

Each of these ecoregions, of course, could be further subdivided into more specific regions.

I like the site because it has good maps. General enough for an overview, but more detailed than a world biome map.

Grace and Peace