Country

Australian Indian Ocean Territories: one ecoregion. Each with its climate now and toward 2050, and its conservation tier.

One ecoregion covers the Australian Indian Ocean Territories: the Christmas and Cocos Islands tropical forests, a tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forest system in the Nature Could Reach Half Protected tier. The realm is the surprise here. These islands sit in the Indomalayan realm rather than the Australasian one the rest of Australia belongs to, so their flora has more in common with Southeast Asia than with the mainland an ocean away. Christmas Island's rain forest grows on a raised limestone plateau and the Cocos atolls are low coral cay. Both are small, isolated and wet, and gardening on either means working with salt wind, thin alkaline ground and a plant list that owes nothing to temperate Australia.