Sonoran Basin and Range Ecoregion: Chapter 30 in Status and trends of land change in the Western United States--1973 to 2000

The Sonoran Basin and Range Ecoregion covers approximately 116,364 km² (44,928 mi²) of desert landscape in southeastern California and southwestern Arizona (fig. 1) (Omernik, 1987; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 1997). This ecoregion is bounded on the west by the Southern and Central California Chaparral and Oak Woodlands and the Southern California Mountains Ecoregions; on the north by the Mojave Basin and Range, the Arizona/New Mexico Plateaus, and the Arizona/New Mexico Mountains Ecoregions; and on the east by the Madrean Archipelago Ecoregion (fig.1). The Sonoran Basin and Range Ecoregion extends far southward into both mainland Mexico and northeastern Baja California peninsula; however, those international parts were not included in the present study. The largest concentrations of population in the ecoregion include the Palm Springs–Coachella Valley area (population 332,485 in 2000) in California’s Riverside County, as well as the Phoenix and Tucson metropolitan areas (metropolitan populations of approximately 4.2 million and 1 million, respectively) in Arizona (U.S. Census Bureau, 2011).