The Piney Woods is a temperate coniferous forest terrestrial ecoregion in the Southern United States covering 54,400 square miles (141,000Â km2) of East Texas, southern Arkansas, western Louisiana, and southeastern Oklahoma. These coniferous forests are dominated by several species of pine as well as hardwoods including hickory and oak. Historically the most dense part of this forest region was the Big Thicket though the lumber industry dramatically reduced the forest concentration in this area and throughout the Piney Woods during the 19th and 20th centuries. The World Wide Fund for Nature considers the Piney Woods to be one of the critically endangered ecoregions of the United States. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defines most of this ecoregion as the South Central Plains.
Satellite image of North America with the Piney Woods eco-region discernible in distinct dark green.
A creek running through the Piney Woods in Northeast Texas.
Little blue heron (Egretta caerulea), Fort Bend County, Texas, USA (October 2020)
Red-shouldered hawk (Buteo lineatus), locality unknown (August 2019)
Temperate coniferous forest
Temperate coniferous forest is a terrestrial biome defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature. Temperate coniferous forests are found predominantly in areas with warm summers and cool winters, and vary in their kinds of plant life. In some, needleleaf trees dominate, while others are home primarily to broadleaf evergreen trees or a mix of both tree types. A separate habitat type, the tropical coniferous forests, occurs in more tropical climates.
A pine forest is an example of a temperate coniferous forest
Carpathian montane conifer forest, Slovakia.
Forest south of Munich
Cedrus deodara in the Western Himalayan subalpine conifer forests,