Country

India

India: 42 ecoregions. Each with its climate now and toward 2050, and its conservation tier.

Landscape and climate

Forty-two ecoregions reach India, spanning ten biomes and two realms, from the Thar desert and the Aravalli west thorn scrub forests to the Sundarbans mangroves and the alpine shrub and meadows of the Palearctic Himalaya. Tropical moist broadleaf forest dominates by count, with sixteen ecoregions running from the Malabar Coast and both Western Ghats belts to the Brahmaputra Valley, while a broad tier of dry deciduous forests covers the Deccan interior. For gardeners this means almost every planting logic coexists in one country: monsoon-fed evergreen and deciduous palettes across the lowlands, drought-adapted thorn scrub and true desert plants in the northwest, and temperate broadleaf, subalpine conifer, and alpine meadow floras stacked up the Himalayan front. Local elevation and monsoon exposure decide more than latitude does.

Ecoregions here

Andaman Islands rain forests Aravalli west thorn scrub forests Brahmaputra Valley semi-evergreen forests Central Deccan Plateau dry deciduous forests Chhota-Nagpur dry deciduous forests Deccan thorn scrub forests East Deccan dry-evergreen forests East Deccan moist deciduous forests Eastern Himalayan alpine shrub and meadows Eastern Himalayan broadleaf forests Eastern Himalayan subalpine conifer forests Godavari-Krishna mangroves Himalayan subtropical broadleaf forests Himalayan subtropical pine forests Karakoram-West Tibetan Plateau alpine steppe Khathiar-Gir dry deciduous forests Lower Gangetic Plains moist deciduous forests Malabar Coast moist forests Meghalaya subtropical forests Mizoram-Manipur-Kachin rain forests Narmada Valley dry deciduous forests Nicobar Islands rain forests North Deccan dry deciduous forests North Western Ghats moist deciduous forests North Western Ghats montane rain forests Northeast Himalayan subalpine conifer forests Northeast India-Myanmar pine forests Northern Triangle temperate forests Northwestern Himalayan alpine shrub and meadows Orissa semi-evergreen forests Rann of Kutch seasonal salt marsh South Deccan Plateau dry deciduous forests South Western Ghats moist deciduous forests South Western Ghats montane rain forests Sundarbans freshwater swamp forests Sundarbans mangroves Terai-Duar savanna and grasslands Thar desert Upper Gangetic Plains moist deciduous forests Western Himalayan alpine shrub and meadows Western Himalayan broadleaf forests Western Himalayan subalpine conifer forests