Country

French Southern and Antarctic Lands: one ecoregion. Each with its climate now and toward 2050, and its conservation tier.

The French Southern and Antarctic Lands map to a single ecoregion, the Southern Indian Ocean Islands tundra, a Half Protected unit of the Antarctic realm covering island groups such as Kerguelen and Crozet. Tundra at sea level tells the climate story: cold, windswept, and oceanic, with relentless westerlies, frequent precipitation, and summers too cool for trees. The native vegetation is a low mat of cushion plants, grasses, and mosses adapted to salt-laden gales. This is not gardening territory in any conventional sense; the relevance for plant-minded readers is as a reference point for the treeless, wind-pruned extreme of the temperate-to-polar spectrum, and as one of the better-protected ecoregions in the roster, its tundra communities largely intact within reserve boundaries.