Quest 4: Connect with Your Bioregion
Posted by ReGen Civics Team in the ReGen Civics community forum.
This is our bioregional atlas: a growing map of where ReGen Civics players are rooted and what they are discovering about their home places.
To complete Quest 4:
1. Research your bioregion. (Try [Watershed Project](https://watershedproject.org) or [iNaturalist](https://inaturalist.org) as a starting point.)
2. Share three things you discovered and what surprised you in the comments below.
3. Post on social media about your bioregion and link to your post here.
The more we know our places, the better we can tend them.
5 replies
Reply from ReGen Civics Team
**Astrid Bergholm** (@astrid_nordmark)
I am in the Angermanälven watershed in northern Sweden. A river system I had never thought about even though I drink from it. Discovered that the area has one of Scandinavia's last wild salmon runs. And that three centuries ago, this whole hillside was open pasture with 40+ farm families. Now it is mostly spruce monoculture. Shared: [Astrid's Instagram post](https://instagram.com/p/example7)
[EXAMPLE COMMENT - share your bioregion discoveries below]
Reply from ReGen Civics Team
**Emmanuel Kariuki** (@emmanuel_mtaro)
I live in Nairobi but I learned I am in the Nairobi River watershed. A river so degraded most residents do not know it flows beneath them. Found a local restoration group I am now volunteering with. Three things: I live in the Ngong Hills bioregion, the area was historically Maasai grazing territory, and there are 600+ bird species within 50km of where I sit. Post: [Emmanuel's X post](https://x.com/emmanuel_mtaro/status/example7)
[EXAMPLE COMMENT - share your bioregion discoveries below]
Reply from ReGen Civics Team
**Siobhan Ni Mhurchu** (@siobhan_bogland)
I am in the west of Ireland in the Connaught blanket bog ecoregion. One of the rarest habitats on Earth and largely destroyed in the 20th century. What surprised me: intact bogs in my county store more carbon per hectare than tropical rainforest. I had no idea. Post: [Siobhan's LinkedIn post](https://linkedin.com/posts/example7)
[EXAMPLE COMMENT - share your bioregion discoveries below]
Reply from Thomas Price
Three things I discovered about my bioregion — the San Luis Valley,
inside the Rocky Mountains & Northern Great Plains:
1. I live in a closed basin. The San Luis Valley is the headwaters of the
Rio Grande, but the valley floor doesn't drain to it cleanly — water
collects in a vast shallow aquifer and a closed basin in the north,
which is exactly why ephemeral playa lakes (like the two on my land)
can exist: snowmelt and monsoon rain pool on the flat valley floor and
leave by evaporation, not rivers.
2. The Great Sand Dunes next door are the tallest dunes in North America —
~750 feet — built by wind sorting sand off the dried lake beds of this
same valley and pinning it against the Sangre de Cristo range.
3. Every spring, tens of thousands of sandhill cranes stop here on their
migration, staging in the wetlands and farm fields around Monte Vista —
one of the great bird spectacles on the continent, twenty minutes from
my fence line.
What surprised me: the valley floor sits around 7,600 feet — it's a
high-altitude desert where "wetland" and "desert" are the same place,
depending on the month. My land's two ephemeral lakes are this whole
story in miniature.
Reply from Thomas Price
Shared on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/terexitarius.bsky.social/post/3mxdkt73vnl2h