Winters are mild to cool and wet, with average daily temperatures around 10✬ in December and January. San Jose, in the approximate north-south center of the ecoregion, has warm to hot and dry summers, with average daily temperatures around 21✬. The climate of this ecoregion is Mediterranean but varies down the long latitudinal gradient and from one side of the Central Valley to the other. The flagship species of the California Interior Chaparral and Woodlands ecoregion is the Alameda striped racer (Alameda whipsnake). This ecoregion hosts the largest number of endemic mammals of all ecoregions in the U.S. The terrain of the California Interior Chaparral and Woodlands ecoregion is largely hills and low mountains, covered by a biologically rich mosaic of chaparral, grasslands, oak savannas and woodlands, serpentine communities, pine and montane conifer forests, riparian forests, and wetlands. To the south lie the California Montane Chaparral and Woodlands and the California Coastal Sage and Chaparral ecoregions. It borders the Klamath-Siskiyou ecoregion on the north and northwest and the Northern California Coastal Forest s and Santa Lucia Montane Chaparral and Woodlands ecoregions on the west.ĭespite its name, it is not entirely interior, touching the Pacific Ocean in the vicinity of San Francisco Bay, Monterey Bay, and from San Simeon south to Point Conception. The ecoregion includes the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Forests ecoregion in the east.

The California Interior Chaparral and Woodlands ecoregion wraps around California’s Central Valley, extending from Shasta Lake in the north to the vicinity of Wheeler Ridge in the south.

Chaparral biome acorn woodpecker