Eastern Mallee: Difference between revisions
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Western Mallee is semi-arid, with a warm, dry, [[Mediterranean climate]], and a winter rainfall of 300 and 500 millimetres (12–19 in).<ref name="Comer 2002"/> |
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Revision as of 12:28, 26 April 2007
Eastern Mallee is an Interim Biogeographic Regionalisation for Australia (IBRA) subregion in southern Western Australia.
Geography
Western Mallee is roughly defined as the eastern half of the Mallee biogeographic region. It has an area of around 41,000 square kilometres, and is very sparsely populated. The only towns occur along the road from Esperance to Norseman. The largest and best known town is Salmon Gums; others include Scaddan, Grass Patch, Red Lake and Dowak, Western Australia.
Geology
Situated on the south-eastern edge of the Yilgarn Craton, Eastern Mallee has a gently undulating landscape. It has a variety of surface types, including calcareous clays and loams containing kankar; outcrops of metamorphosed sandstone; white and yellow sand; and loamy pan fields. Gypsum dunes also occur in the area.[1]
Climate
Western Mallee is semi-arid, with a warm, dry, Mediterranean climate, and a winter rainfall of 300 and 500 millimetres (12–19 in).[1]
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Year | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mean daily maximum temperature | 30.5°C 86.9°F |
29.5°C 85.1°F |
27.2°C 81.0°F |
23.5°C 74.3°F |
19.6°C 67.3°F |
16.8°C 62.2°F |
16.0°C 60.8°F |
17.2°C 63.0°F |
20.4°C 68.7°F |
23.2°C 73.8°F |
26.1°C 79.0°F |
28.9°C 84.0°F |
23.2°C 73.8°F | |
| Mean daily minimum temperature | 14.0°C 57.2°F |
14.2°C 57.6°F |
12.7°C 54.9°F |
10.0°C 50.0°F |
7.2°C 45.0°F |
5.6°C 42.1°F |
4.6°C 40.3°F |
4.7°C 40.5°F |
5.8°C 42.4°F |
7.5°C 45.5°F |
10.1°C 50.2°F |
12.3°C 54.1°F |
9.0°C 48.2°F | |
| Mean total rainfall | 19.3 mm 0.7 in |
23.4 mm 0.9 in |
23.1 mm 0.9 in |
26.0 mm 1.0 in |
35.1 mm 1.4 in |
40.9 mm 1.6 in |
36.7 mm 1.4 in |
33.9 mm 1.3 in |
31.5 mm 1.2 in |
26.8 mm 1.0 in |
25.8 mm 1.0 in |
19.3 mm 0.7 in |
341.9 mm 13.2 in | |
| Mean number of rain days | 3.9 | 4.1 | 4.9 | 7.1 | 9.4 | 10.8 | 11.9 | 11.5 | 9.7 | 7.7 | 5.7 | 4.2 | 90.9 | |
| Source: Bureau of Meteorology[2] | ||||||||||||||
Vegetation
Flora and fauna
Land use
Biogeography
Eastern Mallee was introduced in IBRA Version 6.1. Its region code is MAL1. It is one of two subregions of the Mallee region, the other being Western Mallee.[3] The Mallee, Avon Wheatbelt and Geraldton Sandplains regions together comprise Hopper's Transitional Rainfall Zone of Beard's South West Botanical Province.[4][5] Under the World Wide Fund for Nature's regionalisation of the world's terrestrial surface into "ecoregions", the Western Mallee subregion falls within the Esperance Mallee ecoregion, one of 6 ecoregions comprising the Southwest Australia ecozone.
References
- ^ a b Comer, Sarah, Sandra Gilfillian, Mal Grant, Klaus Tiedemann, Sarah Barrett and Lawrie Anderson (2002). [www.naturebase.net/pdf/science/bio_audit/mallee01_p423-434.pdf "Mallee 1 (MAL1 - Eastern Mallee subregion"] (PDF). Biodiversity Audit of Western Australia's 53 Biogeographic Subregions in 2002. Retrieved 2007-04-26.
{{cite web}}: Check|url=value (help); External link in|work= - ^ "Averages for SALMON GUMS RES.STNs". Bureau of Meteorology. Retrieved 2007-01-31.
- ^ IBRA Version 6.1 data
- ^ Hopper, Stephen D. (1979). "Biogeographical aspects of speciation in the southwest Australian flora". Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics. 10: 399–422.
- ^ Beard, J. S. (1980). "A new phytogeographic map of Western Australia". Western Australian Herbarium Research Notes (3): 37–58.