Great Basin & Columbia Steppe bioregion

The bioregion’s land area is provided in units of 1,000 hectares. The conservation target is the combined Global Safety Net (GSN1) areas for the component ecoregions. The protection level indicates the percentage of the GSN goal that is currently protected on a scale of 0-10. N/A means data is not available at this time.

  • 50,348
    Total Land Area (1000 ha)
  • 3
    Number of Ecoregions
  • 82%
    Protection Target
  • 1
    Protection Level

The Great Basin & Columbia Steppe bioregion, located in the American West subrealm of Northern America, is encircled by mountains on all sides, except for its southern boundary which marks the beginning of the Mojave Desert. It is made up predominantly of desert shrub-steppe dotted with small mountains, which are covered by conifer forest. It contains three ecoregions – Great Basin Montane Forests (356), Great Basin Shrub Steppe (430), and Snake-Columbia Shrub Steppe (434) – and incorporates the Great Salt Lake in central Utah. The total area of this bioregion is approximately 50 million hectares.

The Great Basin & Columbia Steppe bioregion is part of the American West subrealm and is made up of three ecoregions: (1) Snake-Columbia Shrub Steppe (2) Great Basin Shrub Steppe (3) Great Basin Montane Forests.

Learn more about each of the Great Basin & Columbia Steppe ecoregions below.

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