Sky island
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For the fantasy novel by L. Frank Baum, see Sky Island (novel).
Sky islands are mountains in ranges isolated by valleys in which other ecosystems are located. As a result, the mountain ecosystems are isolated from each other, and species can develop in parallel, as on island groups such as the Galápagos Islands.
The best known examples of sky islands are the Madrean sky islands at the northern end of the Sierra Madre Occidental in New Mexico, Arizona, Chihuahua and Sonora on the U.S.-Mexico border.
See also Mt. San Jacinto, in California, the Spring Mountains near Las Vegas, Nevada, and numerous other Nevada mountain ranges.
Other sky islands of note are the Great Basin montane forests of the United States' Great Basin, such as the White Mountains, the Tepuis of Venezuela, Brazil, and Guyana, and in Africa. Some Asian examples include Nat Ma Taung or Mt. Victoria (3050 m) in western Myanmar, Fan Si Pan (3140 m) in northernmost Vietnam, and the mountains of central Taiwan; these mountains all hold isolated outposts of Palearctic flora in the otherwise tropical Indomalayan flora region.
