Temperate South America is a biogeographic region of the Earth's seas, comprising the temperate and subtropical waters of South America, including both the Pacific and Atlantic coasts of the continent and adjacent islands. It also includes the remote Gough Island and Tristan da Cunha in the South Atlantic Ocean.
9-708: Temperate Southern Africa is a marine realm , one of the great biogeographic divisions of the world's ocean basins. On the Atlantic coast, Temperate South America transitions to the Tropical Atlantic marine realm near Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. On the Pacific coast, it extends to Punta Aguja in northern Peru , where it transitions to the Tropical Eastern Pacific realm. To the south lies
18-418: A number of major habitat types that correspond to the terrestrial biomes : polar, temperate shelves and seas, temperate upwelling, tropical upwelling, tropical coral, pelagic (trades and westerlies), abyssal, and hadal (ocean trench). One of the most comprehensive early classifications was the system of 53 coastal provinces developed by Briggs in 1974. The near-global system of 64 large marine ecosystems has
27-646: A partial biogeographic basis. The World Wildlife Fund —WWF identified 43 priority marine ecoregions , as part of its Global 200 initiative. List of marine ecoregions The following is a list of marine ecoregions , as defined by the WWF and The Nature Conservancy The WWF/Nature Conservancy scheme groups the individual ecoregions into 12 marine realms , which represent the broad latitudinal divisions of polar, temperate, and tropical seas, with subdivisions based on ocean basins. The marine realms are subdivided into 62 marine provinces , which include one or more of
36-589: Is an ecoregion , or ecological region, of the oceans and seas identified and defined based on biogeographic characteristics. A more complete definition describes them as “Areas of relatively homogeneous species composition , clearly distinct from adjacent systems” dominated by “a small number of ecosystems and/or a distinct suite of oceanographic or topographic features”. Ecologically they “are strongly cohesive units, sufficiently large to encompass ecological or life history processes for most sedentary species.” The global classification system Marine Ecoregions of
45-555: The Southern Ocean . The Atlantic coast is influenced by the Brazil Current , which carries warm tropical waters south along the coast. On the Pacific coast, the cold Humboldt Current carries cold Antarctic waters north towards the tropics. The Temperate South America realm is divided into five marine provinces. The three larger provinces are composed of smaller ecoregions. Marine realm A marine ecoregion
54-580: The Nature Conservancy’s system in the Americas, although it often uses different names for the subdivisions. This system has a strong biogeographic basis, but was designed to aid in conservation activities for marine ecosystems . Its subdivisions include both the seafloor ( benthic ) and shelf pelagic ( neritic ) biotas of each marine region. The digital ecoregions layer is available for download as an ArcGIS Shapefile. The Marine Ecoregions of
63-548: The World classification defines 232 marine ecoregions (e.g. Adriatic Sea , Cortezian , Ningaloo , Ross Sea ) for the coastal and shelf waters of the world. These marine ecoregions form part of a nested system and are grouped into 62 provinces (e.g. the South China Sea , Mediterranean Sea , Central Indian Ocean Islands ). The provinces in turn, are grouped into 12 major realms. The latter are considered analogous to
72-514: The World—MEOW was devised by an international team, including major conservation organizations, academic institutions and intergovernmental organizations. The system covers coastal and continental shelf waters of the world, and does not include deep ocean waters. The MEOW system integrated the biogeographic regionalization systems in use at national or continental scale, like Australia's Integrated Marine and Coastal Regionalisation of Australia and
81-459: The eight terrestrial realms , represent large regions of the ocean basins: Other classifications of marine ecoregions or equivalent areas have been widely developed at national and regional levels, as well as a small number of global schemes. Each of these systems, along with numerous regional biogeographic classifications, was used to inform the MEOW system. The WWF Global 200 work also identifies
#914085