General Rules

[Falconius]

Speaking of mountains and trees, the treeline generally gets lower (in an absolute sense) the closer to a coast you get.

[Straf]

So does the land elevation so if the treeline didn't get lower the trees would be levitating

[Falconius]

Tell that to British Columbia and Alaska.

[Straf]

I did try to have a word some time ago but they said they just wanted to do their own thing

[waldronate]

http://slideplayer.com/slide/9189080...d+Altitude.jpg and http://wps.prenhall.com/wps/media/ob...FIG25_00A1.JPG may offer some insight into the treeline vs. coast thing. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped..._histogram.svg offers bonus insight into why this might be related to distance from a coast.

And remember that liverworts do grow in some parts of some deserts some of the time.

[Straf]

Is the coastal thing coincidence though? The only places of elevation close to a coast that I can think of are glacial and these tend to further from the equator.

[waldronate]

Coastlines generally tend to be at lower altitudes, therefore, warmer temperatures.

[Straf]

This was Falconius's original comment:

Speaking of mountains and trees, the treeline generally gets lower (in an absolute sense) the closer to a coast you get.

I replied:

So does the land elevation so if the treeline didn't get lower the trees would be levitating

But:

Tell that to British Columbia and Alaska.

And:

Is the coastal thing coincidence though? The only places of elevation close to a coast that I can think of are glacial and these tend to further from the equator.

So:

Coastlines generally tend to be at lower altitudes, therefore, warmer temperatures.

Is the treeline lower nearer the coast or is it because higher coastal elevations are more prevalent much further from the equator due to glacial erosion? Or are there more equatorial coastal regions with high elevation and low tree lines?

[waldronate]

Generally an increase in altitude and an increase in latitude are similar in effect because both lower the temperature (that was showing in one of the pictures that I linked and the way that those diagrams are often drawn can lead to a false interpretation about coastal distances and treeline). The treeline is a temperature-related phenomenon, so treeline and coastline aren't really related: I read the original post backwards. Reading comprehension isn't really my thing at times...

[Falconius]

Actually I don't know if it's a rule. I was looking up tree lines when doing the Dwarf city map and the tree lines from the mountains I took to compile my height map in BC and Alaska were very very low on the coast where as inland closer to Alberta the tree line in the Rockies they were way higher. Like on the coast where I took my mountains from the lines were at 700 meters but in Alberta it was way up to 2000ish meters. Then I got curious about it and I saw the list on Wikipedia about tree lines and coastal tree lines were way lower than the inland ones where ever I looked, Scandinavia has the same phenomenon for instance.