Southwest Australia is a biodiversity hotspot that includes the Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and shrub ecoregions of Western Australia. The region has a wet-winter, dry-summer Mediterranean climate, one of five such regions in the world. The region covers 356,717 km², consisting of a broad coastal plain 20-120 kilometers wide, transitioning to gently undulating uplands made up of weathered granite, gneiss and laterite. Desert and xeric shrublands lie to the north and east across the center of Australia, separating Southwest Australia from the other Mediterranean and humid-climate regions of the continent. A Biodiversity hotspot is a biogeographic region that is both a significant reservoir of biodiversity and is threatened with destruction. ... Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and shrub is a temperate biome, characterized by hot-dry summers and mild and rainy winters. ... An ecoregion is a relatively large area of land or water that contains a geographically distinct assemblage of natural communities. ... Motto: Cygnis Insignis (Distinguished by its swans) Nickname: Wildflower State Other Australian states and territories Capital Perth Government Governor Premier Const. ... A Mediterranean climate is one that resembles those of the lands bordering the Mediterranean Sea. ... Granite is a common and widely-occurring group of intrusive felsic igneous rocks that form at great depths and pressures under continents. ... Banded gneiss with dike of granite orthogneiss Gneiss is a common and widely distributed type of rock formed by high grade regional metamorphic processes from preexisting formations that were originally either igneous or sedimentary rocks. ... Laterite is a red-colored clay rich soil found in the tropics and subtropics. ... Deserts and xeric shrublands is a biome characterized by a dry climate. ...

The vegetation in the region is mainly woody, including forests, woodlands, shrublands, and heathlands, but no grasslands. Predominant vegetation types are Eucalyptus woodlands, eucalyptus-dominated Mallee shrublands, and kwongan shrublands and heathlands, which correspond to the chaparral, matorral, maquis, and fynbos shrublands found in other Mediterranean-type regions. The region has generally nutrient-poor sandy or lateritic soils, which has encouraged rich speciation of plants adapted to specific ecological niches. The region hosts a great diversity of endemic species, notably among the protea family (Proteaceae). A dense growth of softwoods (a forest) in the Sierra Nevada Range of Northern California A forest is an area with a high density of trees (or, historically, an area set aside for hunting). ... Biologically, a woodland is differentiated from a forest. ... Shrubland is a habitat type dominated by woody shrubs. ... Heaths are anthropogenic habitats found primarily in northern and western Europe, where they have been created by thousands of years of human clearance of natural forest vegetation by grazing and burning on mainly infertile acidic soils. ... An Inner Mongolia Grassland. ... Species About 600, see text Eucalyptus is a diverse genus of trees (rarely shrubs), the members of which dominate the tree flora of Australia. ... The term mallee has several separate but inter-related meanings. ... Chapparal can also mean a US Army surface to air missile system based on the Sidewinder air-to-air missile system. ... Matorral is a Spanish word for shrubland. ... See: Maquis (World War II) for the French anti-Nazi resistance Maquis (Spain) for the Spanish anti-Franco guerrilla acting after the Spanish Civil War. ... Fynbos (Afrikaans for fine bush) is the natural vegetation occurring in a small belt of South Africa, mainly in the South-western Cape. ... Speciation refers to the appearance of a new species of life on earth, particularly as seen in the fossil record. ... This article is about the ecological meaning of endemic. See also endemic (epidemiology). ... Genera See text The Proteaceae are a large family of flowering plants of about 80 genera and 1500 species, included in the order Proteales. ...

The region corresponds to the Southwest Botanic Province and the floristic province of Southwest Australia. The World Wildlife Fund and Interim Biogeographic Regionalisation for Australia (IBRA) divide the region up into a number of ecoregions: A floristic province is a geographic area with a relatively uniform composition of plant species. ... Note: After losing a court case in 2002 on the use of the initials WWF, the organization previously known as the World Wrestling Federation has rebranded itself as World Wrestling Entertainment, or WWE. WWF - The Conservation Organization was formerly known as World Wildlife Fund and Worldwide Fund for Nature. ...

• Coolgardie woodlands (IBRA Coolgardie)
• Esperance mallee (IBRA Esperance Plains and Mallee)
• Jarrah-Karri forest and shrublands (IBRA Warren)
• Kwongan heathlands (IBRA Swan Coastal Plain)
• Southwest Australia savanna (IBRA Geraldton Sandplains, Avon Wheatbelt, and Yalgoo)
• Southwest Australia woodlands (IBRA Jarrah Forest)

External link

Southwest Australia (Conservation International)