Country

Georgia: 4 ecoregions. Each with its climate now and toward 2050, and its conservation tier.

Georgia divides sharply along its mountain walls. The Euxine-Colchic broadleaf forests hug the humid Black Sea lowlands, among the wettest temperate forests in the Palearctic, while Caucasus mixed forests clothe the ranges to the north and south. Eastward the country dries out fast: the Eastern Anatolian montane steppe covers the southern highlands, and the Azerbaijan shrub desert and steppe reaches into the easternmost lowlands, both rated Nature Imperiled. So one small country runs from rain-soaked evergreen-understory forest in the west to semi-arid steppe in the east. For planting, that west-east moisture gradient is everything: moisture-loving broadleaf species belong in the Colchic lowlands, hardy mixed-forest trees in the mountains, and drought-adapted steppe plants toward the Azerbaijani border.