US-Northwest

The Pacific Northwest, abbreviated PNW, or PacNW is a region in the northwest of North America. more...

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There are several partially overlapping definitions but the term Pacific Northwest should not be confused with the Northwest Territory (aka the Great Northwest) or the Northwest Territories. The term Northwest Coast is often used when referring only to the coastal regions. The term Northwest Plateau has been used to describe the inland regions, although they are commonly referred to as "the interior" (which in British Columbia is by convention capitalized and is used as a proper name).

The region's biggest cities are Vancouver, BC, Seattle, Portland, Spokane, Tacoma, Boise and Vancouver, WA.

The area's biomes and ecoregions are distinct from the surrounding areas. The Georgia Strait-Puget Sound basin is shared between British Columbia and Washington, and the Pacific temperate rain forests, comprising the world's largest temperate rain forest zone, stretch along the coast from Alaska to California. The dryland area inland from the Cascade Range and Coast Mountains is very different from the terrain and climate of the Coast, and is comprised of the Columbia and Fraser Plateaus and mountain ranges contained within them. The interior regions' climates are a northward extension of the Great Western Desert which spans the Great Basin farther south, although by their northern reaches dryland and desert areas verge with boreal forest and various alpine flora regimes.

Definitions and related terms

The Pacific Northwest, broadly defined, extends from the ocean to the continental divide and includes all of Washington and Oregon, and most of Idaho and British Columbia, and adjoining parts of Alaska, Yukon Territory and California. Both the name "Pacific Northwest" and the name "Cascadia", which is derived from the Cascade Range, are commonly used without a definition, although the term "Pacific Northwest" is considerably older, having its origins in the early 19th century.

"Cascadia" is of recent coinage (1980s) and is sometimes used in geology, ecology and climatology and increasingly by community members and small businesses and organizations with a regional-marketing identity. It is also the name of a two-year college in Bothell, Washington. Of the two terms, only "Pacific Northwest" is in general use, and also encompasses more area than the Cascadia concept, which tends to be more coastal and limited to the Evergreen Triangle area of Washington and Oregon. As a bioregion, Cascadia has been defined as "the watersheds of rivers that flow into the Pacific Ocean through North America's temperate rainforest zone".

In the United States, the term "Pacific Northwest" is also used for most of the official region of the Northwestern United States, which includes the American states of the Pacific Northwest but excludes areas of it in Canada.

Read more at Wikipedia.org