Colorado Rockies forests
temperate coniferous forests ecoregion of the United States
The Colorado Rockies forests is a temperate coniferous forest ecoregion of the United States. This ecoregion is located in the highest ranges of the Southern Rocky Mountains, in central and western Colorado, northern New Mexico and southeastern Wyoming, and experiences a dry continental climate. This ecoregion is the same as the Southern Rockies ecoregion in the EPA classification scheme from Omernik.
Flora
The dominant vegetation type of this ecoregion is coniferous forest. In contrast with Rocky Mountain ecoregions to the north, lodgepole pine is rather rare, replaced by ponderosa pine and quaking aspen. Rocky Mountain Douglas-fir, Engelmann spruce, subalpine fir, limber pine and Gambel oak can also be found in the mountain forests. Bristlecone pine is the dominant plant at the tree line/krummholz zone. Aside from coniferous forests, the ecoregion contains meadows, foothill grasslands, riparian woodlands and alpine tundra.
Fauna
Mammals include elk, mule deer, black bear, mountain lions, wolverine, Canada lynx, and American marten. Grizzly bears may exist in this region but there has not been a confirmed sighting of a grizzly in Colorado since 1979.
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This entry incorporates text from “Colorado Rockies forests” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.