page_title: Ecology of the Rocky Mountains
section_title: Biotic zones
hierarchical_section_title: Ecology of the Rocky Mountains / Biotic zones
caption_attribution_description: English: Five bison part of a larger herd lying down on a grassy slope at the National Bison Range in Moiese, Montana.
context_page_description: The ecology of the Rocky Mountains is diverse due to the effects of a variety of environmental factors. The Rocky Mountains are the major mountain range in western North America, running from the far north of British Columbia in Canada to New Mexico in the southwestern United States, climbing from the Great Plains at or below 1,800 feet to peaks of over 14,000 feet. Temperature and rainfall varies greatly also and thus the Rockies are home to a mixture of habitats including the alpine, subalpine and boreal habitats of the Northern Rocky Mountains in British Columbia and Alberta, the coniferous forests of Montana and Idaho, the wetlands and prairie where the Rockies meet the plains, a different mix of conifers on the Yellowstone Plateau in Wyoming and in the high Rockies of Colorado and New Mexico, and finally the alpine tundra of the highest elevations.
context_section_description: Ecologists divide the Rocky Mountain into a number of biotic zones, defined by whether they can support trees, and the presence of one or more indicator species. Areas of the Rockies that do not support or have few trees include the prairie of the eastern foothills and the Alpine tundra. The foothill prairie grassland lies to the east of the Rockies where the mountains fall to meet the Great Plains at the Rocky Mountain Front (below roughly 1,800 feet (550 m)). Alpine tundra meanwhile occurs in regions above the treeline, which varies from 12,000 feet (3,700 m) in New Mexico to 2,500 feet (760 m) at the northern end (near the Yukon).
  The USGS defines ten forested zones in the Rocky Mountains. The more southern, warmer, drier zones are defined by the presence of pinyon pines/junipers, ponderosa pines, or oaks mixed with pines. The more northern, colder, wetter zones are defined by Douglas-firs, Cascadian species (such as western hemlock), lodgepole pines/quaking aspens, or firs mixed with spruce. Near the treeline, zones can consist of white pines (such as whitebark pine or bristlecone pine); or a mixture of white pine, fir, and spruce that appear as shrub-like krummholz. Finally, rivers and canyons are home to unique forest habitats even in the more arid parts of the mountain range.
  Biotic zones and vegetation types in the Rocky Mountains can be explained by elevation, aspect, and precipitation. Clinton Merriam recognized that two-dimensional diagrams of elevation and aspect described plant community distribution in the Southern Rocky Mountains. Other ecologists generally embraced this two-dimensional view until the complexities of environmental gradients such as temperature, precipitation, solar radiation, wind, soils, and hydrology could be described and modeled. Peet provided the most complete description of 10 major forest community types, which are summarized here. Two nonforested vegetation types, plains and alpine tundra, described by Sims and Billings, are added. Because of the variations in latitude and precipitation along this huge mountain range, the elevations presented here are gross generalizations.
  Extensive investigations have been made of the forests of the Rocky Mountains. Weber cautioned that the vegetation zones "overlap and telescope into each other considerably" in a landscape that is "always full of surprises." The resulting patchwork mosaic of vegetation types and disturbance regimes leads to a complex of side-by-side communities, wildlife habitats, and species distributions.
caption: Bison grazing in grassland, Montana
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