Missouri Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Ecoregions

In 2002, the final draft of the United States Environmental Protection Agency's (USEPA) Missouri Ecoregion map was completed and published. It is the result of a collaborative effort between the USEPA Region VII, the USEPA National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory (Corvallis, Oregon), the Missouri Department of Natural Resources (MDNR), the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC), the University of Missouri, Department of Geography and the Missouri Resource Assessment Partnership (MoRAP), the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) - Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), the USDA Forest Service and the US Department of Interior - United States Geological Survey (USGS) - Earth Resources Observation Systems (EROS) Data Center.

The Level III and IV boundaries shown on the map below are coincident with the Missouri ECS LTA boundary delineations compiled at 1:100,000 scale. The boundaries depict revisions and subdivisions of earlier Level III ecoregions that were originally compiled on a smaller scale. All EPA sourced drafts and final maps will reflect generalized and smoothed boundary lines that have been recompiled at a scale of 1:250,000 in keeping with USEPA Ecoregion System's national compilation protocol.

Complete interagency agreement on the hierarchal structure could not be reached and the interagency team's changes proposed for the final draft were not adopted. These changes included the separation of the glacial till plains and the Osage/Cherokee plains at the Level III and a more detailed breakout of the River Hills unit at Level IV. Nonetheless, the resulting boundaries strongly complement the Missouri ECS and MLRA mapping and reflect a concerted interagency effort within the state to bring the three national frameworks into better alignment with each other.

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   Missouri EPA Ecoregion map (PDF, 117 KB)

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