Inner Coast Ranges

The Inner Coast Ranges are an extensive mountain range within California in the USA. In Northern California the ranges can be characterized as a mountainous landform from near Anderson south along the east slope of the North Coast Ranges, around the south end of the High North Coast Ranges to west of the Russian River. The term inner is a reference to the greater distance of the ranges from the Pacific Ocean, compared to the outer ranges that are nearer to that ocean.

Ecology

Willis Linn Jepson was one of the first to describe the flora of the Inner North Coast Ranges. Jepson notes the presence of Yellow Pine and Sugar Pine species. Ecosystems within the Inner Coast Ranges include California oak woodland, chaparral, oak savanna and grassland. Dominant oak trees include Quercus agrifolia and Quercus douglasii. In the southern elements of the Inner Coast Ranges the hybrid oak Quercus alvordiana occurs from Carmel Valley to the Tehachapi Mountains.

References

Pacific Coast Ranges

The Pacific Coast Ranges (officially gazetted as the Pacific Mountain System in the United States but referred to as the Pacific Coast Ranges), are the series of mountain ranges that stretch along the West Coast of North America from Alaska south to Northern and Central Mexico.

The Pacific Coast Ranges are part of the North American Cordillera (sometimes known as the Western Cordillera, or in Canada, as the Pacific Cordillera and/or the Canadian Cordillera), which includes the Rocky Mountains, Columbia Mountains, Interior Mountains, the Interior Plateau, Sierra Nevada Mountains, the Great Basin mountain ranges, and other ranges and various plateaus and basins.

The Pacific Coast Ranges designation, however, only applies to the Western System of the Western Cordillera, which comprises the Saint Elias Mountains, Coast Mountains, Insular Mountains, Olympic Mountains, Cascade Range, Oregon Coast Range, California Coast Ranges, Transverse Ranges, Peninsular Ranges, and the Sierra Madre Occidental.

California Coast Ranges

The Coast Ranges of California span 400 miles (640 km) from Humboldt County, California south to Santa Barbara County. The other three coastal California mountain ranges are the Transverse Ranges, Peninsular Ranges and the Klamath Mountains.

Physiographically, they are a section of the larger Pacific Border province, which in turn are part of the larger Pacific Mountain System physiographic division. UNESCO has included the "California Coast Ranges Biosphere Reserve" in its Man and the Biosphere Programme of World Network of Biosphere Reserves since 1983.

Physiography

The northern end of the California Coast Ranges overlap the southern end of the Klamath Mountains for approximately 80 miles on the west. They extend southward for more than 600 miles to where the coastline turns eastward along the Santa Barbara Channel, around the area of Point Conception. Here the southern end meets the Los Angeles Transverse Ranges, or (Sierras de los Angeles). The rocks themselves that comprise the mountains are of a great variety and widely varying geologic ages. Most of the rocks were formed during the Tertiary, Cretaceous and Jurassic periods. Most were deposited on the sea bottom as sediments, but in many places also had the cracks, crevices and other gaps infused with molten lava or other masses of igneous rock, which were forced in molten condition into the sedimentary rocks. All of the range has been folded and faulted during several periods, with erosion of the softer rock giving much of the current appearance.