Wyoming Basin Ecoregion: Chapter 25 in <i>Status and trends of land change in the Western United States--1973 to 2000</i>

The Wyoming Basin Ecoregion (Omernik 1987; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 1999) covers approximately 128,914 km2 (49,774 mi2) in Wyoming and parts of northwestern Colorado, northeastern Utah, southeastern Idaho, and southern Montana (fig. 1). The ecoregion is bounded on the east by the Northwestern Great Plains Ecoregion; on the south and east by the Southern Rockies Ecoregion; on the south by the Colorado Plateaus Ecoregion; on the south and west by the Wasatch and Uinta Mountains Ecoregion; and on the north by the Middle Rockies Ecoregion and parts of the Montana Valley and Foothill Prairies Ecoregion (fig. 1). The ecoregion generally consists of broad intermountain basins dominated by arid grasslands and shrublands, as well as isolated hills and low mountains that merge to the south into a dissected plateau.