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The Sahara desert, as defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), includes the hyper-arid center of the Sahara, between latitudes 18° N and 30° N. It is one of several desert and xeric shrubland ecoregions that cover the northern portion of the African continent.
The Global 200 is the list of ecoregions identified by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the global conservation organization, as priorities for conservation. According to WWF, an ecoregion is defined as a "relatively large unit of land or water containing a characteristic set of natural communities that share a large majority of their species dynamics, and environmental conditions". For example, based on their levels of endemism, Madagascar gets multiple listings, ancient Lake Baikal gets one, and the North American Great Lakes get none.
Zabul is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan, located in the south of the country. It has a population of 249,000. Zabul became an independent province from neighbouring Kandahar in 1963. Historically, it was part of the Zabulistan region. Qalat serves as the capital of the province. The major ethnic group are Pashtuns. Primary occupations within Zabul are agriculture and animal husbandry.
The ecology of California can be understood by dividing the state into a number of ecoregions, which contain distinct ecological communities of plants and animals in a contiguous region. The ecoregions of California can be grouped into four major groups: desert ecoregions, Mediterranean ecoregions, forested mountains, and coastal forests.
Shrubland, scrubland, scrub, brush, or bush is a plant community characterized by vegetation dominated by shrubs, often also including grasses, herbs, and geophytes. Shrubland may either occur naturally or be the result of human activity. It may be the mature vegetation type in a particular region and remain stable over time, or a transitional community that occurs temporarily as the result of a disturbance, such as fire. A stable state may be maintained by regular natural disturbance such as fire or browsing. Shrubland may be unsuitable for human habitation because of the danger of fire. The term was coined in 1903.
Eirenis is a genus of Old World snakes in the family Colubridae.
The Great Basin montane forests is an ecoregion of the Temperate coniferous forests biome, as designated by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
The ecology of the Himalayas varies with climate, rainfall, altitude, and soils. The climate ranges from tropical at the base of the mountains to permanent ice and snow at the highest elevations. The amount of yearly rainfall increases from west to east along the southern front of the range. This diversity of climate, altitude, rainfall and soil conditions supports a variety of distinct plant and animal species, such as the Nepal gray langur
The wildlife of Turkmenistan is the flora and fauna of Turkmenistan, and the natural habitats in which they live. Turkmenistan is a country in Central Asia to the east of the Caspian Sea. Two thirds of the country is hot dry plains and desert, and the rest is more mountainous. Very little rain falls in summer and the chief precipitation occurs in the southern part of the country in the winter and spring. The Caspian coast has milder winters.
The Namibian savanna woodlands, also known as the Namib escarpment woodlands, are the deserts and xeric shrublands ecoregion of Namibia and Angola.
The Ghorat-Hazarajat alpine meadow ecoregion covers the high mountainous elevations of central Afghanistan. The ecoregion fans out to the west from the capital city of Kabul at the eastern point. Vegetation is thornbush meadows and alpine grassland. The region is the home of the critically endangered Afghan brook salamander, which depends on the cold waters of the high streams of the ecoregion.
The Kuh Rud and Eastern Iran montane woodlands ecoregion covers hills and mountains in central and eastern Iran. The habitat is wetter and cooler than the surrounding desert of the Iranian Plateau, supporting the vulnerable goitered gazelle and small populations of the cheetah. The ecoregion is under conservation threat from overgrazing and conversion of steep slopes to cultivation.
The Central Afghan Mountains xeric woodlands ecoregion covers the xeric (dry) eastern and southern slopes of the central mountain range of Afghanistan, between the sandy desert to the south and the alpine meadows in the higher, wetter region to the north. Despite the 'woodlands' in the ecoregion name, very little of the territory is forested – less than 1% – but is instead sparse vegetation or herbaceous cover.
The Registan–North Pakistan sandy desert ecoregion covers the dry Sistan Basin of southern Afghanistan and portions of eastern Iran and southwest Pakistan. The Registan Desert is the eastern portion of the Sistan Basin. The region is almost entirely dry sandy desert, with some irrigated cropland along the rivers. There are some seasonal wetlands at the western terminus of the Helmand River into Hamun Lake. The region support five endemic species of reptiles.
The Paropamisus xeric woodlands ecoregion covers the portion of northeastern Afghanistan north of the central mountain range and the Hindu Kush Mountains. The name is derived from the Old Persian name for the region, Parupraesanna. While there are low canopy woodlands in the northeast of the ecorgegion, most of the territory is desert or xeric (dry) scrubland.
The Baluchistan xeric woodlands ecoregion covers the middle elevations of a series of mountain ranges of western Pakistan and northeastern Afghanistan, reaching 1,200 kilometres (750 mi) from the Arabian Sea in the south to the Hindu Kush Mountains and the Himalayas in the north. The characteristic vegetation is xeric (dry) woodlands of shrubs and herbaceous cover. The region has rich biodiversity but relatively few endemic species.
The Sulaiman Range alpine meadows ecoregion covers a series of higher altitude mountain ranges along the crest of the Sulaiman Mountains, a southerly extension of the Hindu Kush Mountains along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The area is relatively undeveloped, with about a third of the terrain either forested or in 'alpine steppe' shrub or herbaceous cover.
Juniperus seravschanica is a species of juniper. Common names include Pashtun juniper.
References
- C.Michael Hogan; World Wildlife Fund. 2012. Registan-North Pakistan sandy desert. Encyclopedia of Earth. National Council for Science and the Environment. Topic ed. Peter Saundry