Description

Twentieth Century climatology was dominated by two
great figures: Wladamir
Köppen and C. Warren Thornthwaite. The first
carefully developed climatic parameters
to match the larger world vegetation communities. The
second developed complex
formulas of Moisture Factors that provided
efficient understanding of how
evapotranspiration influences plant growth and
health, both for native and non-native
communities.
In the latter half of the Twentieth Century, the
Sunset Magazine Corporation
develop a purely empirical set of Garden Zones, first
for California. This thesis examines the digitized
zones with reference to PRISM climate data.
Variable coverages resembling those described by
Sunset are extracted from the PRISM
data. These variable coverages are collected for two
buffered areas, one in northern
California and one in southern California. This
process is quite amenable for further
examination of other regions of California