Country

The Bahamas: 2 ecoregions. Each with its climate now and toward 2050, and its conservation tier.

The Bahamian archipelago pairs two ecoregions found almost nowhere else together: the Bahamian pineyards, open Caribbean pine woodland on the limestone of the larger northern islands, and the Bahamian-Antillean mangroves that fringe the shallow banks and tidal creeks throughout the chain. Between them they describe the islands well - flat limestone, thin alkaline soils, salt on every wind, and a warm climate with a drier winter season. For gardeners that combination matters more than temperature: success depends on plants that tolerate alkaline rock, salt spray, and periodic drought, which is exactly what the native pines, palms, and coastal shrubs of these two ecoregions do. Both rate as recoverable or better, and the pineyards remain one of the Caribbean's distinctive conifer landscapes.