The Fraser Plateau and Basin conifer forests cover the central interior of British Columbia, a landscape of rolling plateaus and plains blanketed in thick glacial drift between the Coast Mountains and the Rockies. Montane forests here hold lodgepole pine, quaking aspen, Douglas-fir, and white spruce, giving way to Engelmann spruce and subalpine fir at higher elevations. The climate is boreal interior Cordilleran, with a mean annual temperature near 3C and precipitation ranging from roughly 250-300 mm in the driest valleys to 600-800 mm per year at higher elevations. The region's wetlands host the continent's largest breeding concentrations of Barrow's goldeneye and bufflehead, and it shelters a relatively stable woodland caribou herd, though logging is the leading conservation threat.

At a glance

About the temperate conifer forests biome

Temperate forests dominated by evergreen conifers, from coastal rainforests to montane pine and fir stands. Adapted to cool, moist or seasonally dry climates, they include some of the tallest and longest-lived trees on the planet.

National refinement sub-regions

Catalog plants suited to this ecoregion

Computed from each plant's stated USDA zone range against this ecoregion's NRCan Plant Hardiness Zone 1981-2010 GeoTIFF published current zone range, with the CHELSA mid-century warming delta applied for the projection. Plants whose stated range falls outside both the current and projected zone end up dropped; the rest land in one of the three buckets below.

Collections for this ecoregion

Curated multi-plant collections whose members all fit this ecoregion's zone range — no won't-grow members smuggled in. Overall fit class shown per collection is the weakest link across its members.

Related ecoregions