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Alaska Boreal Interior

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Name	†	Color on Map	CEC Code‡
Interior Forested Lowlands and Uplands	✓		3.1.1
Interior Bottomlands	✓		3.1.2
Yukon Flats	✓		3.1.3

† Status: ✓ = Complete ○ = Needs Image … = Incomplete ∅ = Stub Only

‡ This code refers to the CEC's Level 3 ecoregion codes for North America, see here.

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↑About the Alaska Boreal Interior

The Alaska Boreal Interior region encompasses a variety of regions in interior Alaska that have lusher vegetation than the Tundra and are less mountainous than the Boreal Cordillera. This region is the northwesternmost limit of the Taiga in North America. The climate is more continental, with more extreme swings of hot and cold.

This region is quite diverse in terms of climate and vegetation cover, and is divided into several level III ecoregions, each of which is themselves rather diverse as well. Local diversity in microclimate and habitat is driven by many factors, both long-term and dynamic, including inconsistent permafrost, variations in topography, and fire.

Vegetation includes trees, with both spruce and hardwoods, sometimes extensive enough to become forests. There are also taller scrublands, grasslands, and extensive wetland areas. The Yukon Flats are a more open, marshy part of this area to the northeast.

In spite of its northerly location, this area was not glaciated during the quaternary or pleistocene glaciations, contrasting with areas both to the north and south. This has resulted in this region having a uniquely old history to the species found here. Across most of North America, even much warmer regions were covered with ice during glacial periods.

This region is bordered to the southeast and northeast and at numerous scattered areas of higher elevation by the Boreal Cordillera, to the north by the Brooks Range Tundra, and to the west by the Alaska Tundra, also with a small border with the northwesternmost part of the Marine West Coast Forest