Sky Island
Sky islands are mountains that are isolated by surrounding lowlands of a dramatically different environment, a situation which, in combination with the altitudinal zonation of ecosystems, has significant implications for natural habitats. Endemism, vertical migration, and relict populations are some of the natural phenomena to be found on sky islands.
The complex dynamics of species richness on sky islands draws attention from the discipline of biogeography, and likewise the biodiversity is of concern to conservation biology. One of the key elements of a sky island is separation by sheer physical distance from the other mountain ranges, resulting in a habitat island, such as a forest surrounded by desert.
Some sky islands serve as refugia for boreal species stranded by warming climates since the last ice age. In other cases, localized populations of plants and animals tend towards speciation, the same process that happens on oceanic islands such as the Galápagos Islands.
Read more about Sky Island: Origin of The Term, Characteristics
Famous quotes containing the words sky and/or island:
“With spring the father-sky remakes the world:
The male shower has flowed into the bride,
Earth’s body; then shifted through sky and sea and land
To touch the quickening child in her deep side.”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“The shifting islands! who would not be willing that his house should be undermined by such a foe! The inhabitant of an island can tell what currents formed the land which he cultivates; and his earth is still being created or destroyed. There before his door, perchance, still empties the stream which brought down the material of his farm ages before, and is still bringing it down or washing it away,—the graceful, gentle robber!”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)