Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt Pine-oak Forests - Setting

Setting

The Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt Pine-Oak Forests occupy an area of 91,800 square kilometers (35,400 sq mi), extending from Jalisco state in the west to Veracruz in the east.

The pine-oak forests are surrounded by tropical dry forests at lower elevations to the west, northwest, and south; the Jalisco dry forests to the west and southwest; the Balsas dry forests to the south, in the basin of the Balsas River, and the Bajío dry forests to the northwest, in the basin of the Rio Grande de Santiago and the lower Rio Lerma. The Central Mexican matorral lies to the north of the range in the high basins of the Plateau, including the Valley of Mexico and the upper reaches of the Lerma around Toluca. The Tehuacan valley matorral lies in the rain shadow valley to the southeast in Puebla and Tlaxcala states. To the east, the moist Veracruz montane forests and Oaxacan montane forests are the transition between the pine-oak forests and the lowland tropical forests along the Gulf of Mexico.

Pockets of montane grassland and shrubland can be found among the pine-oak forests, and constitute a separate ecoregion, the Zacatonal.