The coastal temperate rain forest ecosystem extends from the continental shelf to the crest of the coastal mountains.
Regionalism is an utterly organic phenomenon.
Our Bioregional Information System describes patterns of change along the rain forest coast. Coastal temperate rain forests are found in wet, cool climates where the collision of marine air and coastal mountains causes large amounts of rainfall. The worldwide distribution of coastal temperate rain forests has always been limited and today much of their remaining thirty to forty million hectares is located in Chile and along the Pacific Northwest of North America. Realization of the uniqueness of coastal temperate rain forests has come quite recently. Knowledge of these forests and interest in the bioregions where they stand are now growing rapidly.