Citizens of Mauritania have various transportation methods. Railways and highways connect major cities in the country. Mauritania is a coastal country so there are many ports along its coast and there are a few big rivers that run through the country. Lastly, there are 26 airports spread out throughout the country.
The Armed Forces of Mauritania is the defence force of Mauritania, having an army, navy, air force, gendarmerie, and presidential guard. Other services include the national guard and national police, though they both are subordinated to the Ministry of the Interior. As of 2010, the Mauritanian armed forces budget was 5.5% of the country's GDP.
Transport in Western Sahara is very limited by sea, road and air with camels being the primary means of transport in the desert area. Road transport by buses remain the major mode of transportation. The longest conveyor belt in the world is 100 kilometres (62 mi) long, from the phosphate mines of Bu Craa to the coast south of Laayoune. The belt moves about 2,000 metric tons of rock containing phosphate every hour from the mines to El-Aaiun, where it is loaded and shipped.
An aquifer is an underground layer of water-bearing permeable rock, rock fractures or unconsolidated materials. Groundwater can be extracted using a water well. The study of water flow in aquifers and the characterization of aquifers is called hydrogeology. Related terms include aquitard, which is a bed of low permeability along an aquifer, and aquiclude, which is a solid, impermeable area underlying or overlying an aquifer, the pressure of which could create a confined aquifer.
Nouakchott is the capital and largest city of Mauritania. It is one of the largest cities in the Sahel. The city also serves as the administrative and economic center of Mauritania.
Mauritania, a country in the western region of the continent of Africa, is generally flat, its 1,030,700 square kilometres forming vast, arid plains broken by occasional ridges and clifflike outcroppings. It borders the North Atlantic Ocean, between Senegal and Western Sahara, Mali and Algeria. It is considered part of both the Sahel and the Maghreb. A series of scarps face southwest, longitudinally bisecting these plains in the center of the country. The scarps also separate a series of sandstone plateaus, the highest of which is the Adrar Plateau, reaching an elevation of 500 metres. Spring-fed oases lie at the foot of some of the scarps. Isolated peaks, often rich in minerals, rise above the plateaus; the smaller peaks are called Guelbs and the larger ones Kedias. The concentric Guelb er Richat is a prominent feature of the north-central region. Kediet ej Jill, near the city of Zouîrât, has an elevation of 1,000 metres and is the highest peak.
The Sahara is a desert on the African continent. With an area of 9,200,000 square kilometres (3,600,000 sq mi), it is the largest hot desert in the world and the third largest desert overall, smaller only than the deserts of Antarctica and the Arctic. The name 'Sahara' is derived from the Arabic word for "desert", ṣaḥra, plural.
The Richat Structure, also called Guelb er Richât, the Eye of Africa, or Eye of the Sahara is a prominent circular feature in the Sahara's Adrar Plateau, near Ouadane, west–central Mauritania, Northwest Africa. It is an eroded dome, 40 kilometres (25 mi) in diameter, exposing sedimentary rock in layers which appear as concentric rings. Igneous rock is exposed inside and there are spectacular rhyolites and gabbros which have undergone hydrothermal alteration, and a central megabreccia. The structure is also the location of exceptional accumulations of Acheulean archaeological artifacts.
Dakhla is a city in Western Sahara, a disputed territory currently administered by Morocco. It is the capital of the Moroccan administrative region Dakhla-Oued Ed-Dahab. It has a population of 106,277 and is built on a narrow peninsula of the Atlantic Coast, the Río de Oro Peninsula, about 550 km south of Laayoune.
The Moroccan Western Sahara Wall or Berm is an approximately 2,700 km (1,700 mi) long structure, mostly a sand wall, running through Western Sahara and the southwestern portion of Morocco. It separates the Moroccan areas on the west from the Polisario-controlled areas on the east.
The Banc d'Arguin National Park of Bay of Arguin lies in Western Africa on the west coast of Mauritania between Nouakchott and Nouadhibou. The World Heritage Site is a major breeding site for migratory birds, including flamingos, broad-billed sandpipers, pelicans and terns. Much of the breeding is on sand banks including the islands of Tidra, Niroumi, Nair, Kijji and Arguim. The surrounding waters are some of the richest fishing waters in western Africa and serve as nesting grounds for the entire western region.
Environmental assessment (EA) is the assessment of the environmental consequences of a plan, policy, program, or actual projects prior to the decision to move forward with the proposed action. In this context, the term "environmental impact assessment" (EIA) is usually used when applied to actual projects by individuals or companies and the term "strategic environmental assessment" (SEA) applies to policies, plans and programmes most often proposed by organs of state. It is a tool of environmental management forming a part of project approval and decision-making. Environmental assessments may be governed by rules of administrative procedure regarding public participation and documentation of decision making, and may be subject to judicial review.
The Mauritania Railway is the national railway of Mauritania. Construction of the line began in 1960, with it opening in 1963. It consists of a single, 704-kilometre (437 mi) railway line linking the iron mining centre of Zouerate with the port of Nouadhibou, via Fderik and Choum. The state agency Société Nationale Industrielle et Minière controls the railway line.
Mauretania's wildlife has two main influences as the country lies in two Biogeographic realms, the north sits in the Palearctic which extends south from the Sahara to roughly 19° North and the south in the Afrotropic realms. Additionally Mauritania is important for numerous birds which migrate from the Palearctic to winter there.
The Tasiast gold mine is an open-pit gold mine in Mauritania, owned and operated by Kinross Gold. The mine is located 300 kilometres (190 mi) north of the capital of Nouakchott in a wadi called Khatt Atui.
The Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes, also known as the Water Convention, is an international environmental agreement and one of five UNECE's negotiated environmental treaties. The purpose of this Convention is to improve national attempts and measures for protection and management of transboundary surface waters and groundwaters. On the international level, Parties are obliged to cooperate and create joint bodies. The Convention includes provisions on: monitoring, research, development, consultations, warning and alarm systems, mutual assistance and access as well as exchange of information.
Lake Ptolemy is a former lake in Sudan. This lake formed during the Holocene in the Darfur region, during a time when the monsoon over Africa was stronger. The existence of the lake is dated between about 9,100–2,400 years before present. This lake could have reached a surface area of 30,750 square kilometres (11,870 sq mi), larger than present-day Lake Erie, although estimates of its size vary and it might have been much smaller. The shorelines in some places, insofar as they are recognizable, feature riparian landscapes and reeds. The lake was a freshwater lake replenished by groundwater and runoff from neighbouring mountains and might itself have been the source for the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System. The lake featured a diverse ecosystem with a number of species, and possibly facilitated the spread of species between the Nile and Lake Chad.
The African humid period (AHP) is a climate period in Africa during the late Pleistocene and Holocene geologic epochs, when northern Africa was wetter than today. The covering of much of the Sahara desert by grasses, trees and lakes was caused by changes in Earth's orbit around the Sun; changes in vegetation and dust in the Sahara which strengthened the African monsoon; and increased greenhouse gases, which may imply that anthropogenic global warming could result in a shrinkage of the Sahara desert.
The Fazzan Basin, or Fezzan Basin, is a large endorheic basin in Libya. It has no outlet to the sea and contains large areas of desert or semi-arid land. It is one of two basins in southern Libya on the northern flanks of the Tibesti Mountains in the central Sahara desert, the other being the Kufra Basin, further to the east.
