Climatic Domains of the Arid and Semiarid Zones of Mexico

Preview this chapter:

Climatic Domains of the Arid and Semiarid Zones of Mexico, Page 1 of 1

< Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/9789815322460/chapter-1-1.gif

The arid and semiarid zones of Mexico occupy more than half of the country's territory, a characteristic that makes them extremely heterogeneous. It has been suggested that climate heterogeneity promotes biological diversity; consequently, different climatic factors are important for explaining species distribution patterns at different scales. Multiple studies have considered climate as a substitute for biodiversity; therefore, describing environmental characteristics is of great interest in understanding biological diversity. The objective of this chapter is to perform a climatic characterization of the arid and semiarid zones of Mexico through climatic domains to understand the climatic heterogeneity in these environments. We defined climate domains as geographic units with similar environments through nonhierarchical multivariate classification of a dataset comprising climate estimates for points along a 1-km grid throughout the study area. As a result, we defined 15 climatic domains that allowed us to recognize regional environmental variations. According to the row fusion dendrogram, three groups were identified according to their environmental characteristics, and two domains remained independent. In this chapter, we present a classification of climatic domains for the arid and semiarid zones of Mexico to show part of the variation within these zones and as a form of regionalization that allows us to make sense of the biological patterns that will be studied in other chapters. Consequently, a better understanding of climate heterogeneity within a region can support the selection of areas with distinct environmental attributes and biological patterns.