Setting
The Sahara is a vast desert, stretching across northern Africa from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea. Some mountains (Ahaggar, Tassili n'Ajjer, Tibesti, Aïr) rise up from the desert and receive more rainfall and mostly present slightly cooler summer temperatures. These highlands support dry woodlands and shrublands distinct from the hot dry desert lowlands.
This ecoregion has an area of 258,100 km2 (99,700 sq mi). The boundaries for the largest part of this ecoregion, which includes the Tassili n'Ajjer Ahaggar and Aïr (or Azbine) massifs, follow the 'regs,' 'hamadas' and 'wadis' above the 1000 m contour. This covers a good part of southeast Algeria. These areas reach almost 3000 meters in altitude. Additional areas further south were included within this ecoregion, including the Aïr ou Azbine in northern Niger, Dhar Adrar in Mauritania, and Adrar des Iforas in Mali and Algeria, using the 500 m-elevation contour.
The mountains of the West Saharan Montane Xeric Woodland ecoregion are found within the Sahara Desert and are predominantly of volcanic origin. They rise from the surrounding flat desert landscape or sand dunes and create islands of moister habitat (guelta) which support flora and fauna. The most important area is the Tassili n'Ajjer Plateau, an outlier of the Ahaggar Mountains in Algeria which supports some near-endemic species and some globally threatened antelopes. The highest point of these mountains is 3003 meters (Mount Tahat).
Winters are quite rigorous, with amplitude in temperature over 20°C. Day temperatures may be over 20°C while nights are freezing. In summer, days are very hot, though less than in central Sahara. Rainfall is rare and sporadic.
Read more about this topic: West Saharan Montane Xeric Woodlands
Famous quotes containing the word setting:
“High from the summit of a craggy cliff,
Hung o’er the deep, such as amazing frowns
On utmost Kilda’s shore, whose lonely race
Resign the setting sun to Indian worlds,
The royal eagle draws his vigorous young”
—James Thomson (1700–1748)
“With wonderful art he grinds into paint for his picture all his moods and experiences, so that all his forces may be brought to the encounter. Apparently writing without a particular design or responsibility, setting down his soliloquies from time to time, taking advantage of all his humors, when at length the hour comes to declare himself, he puts down in plain English, without quotation marks, what he, Thomas Carlyle, is ready to defend in the face of the world.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A happy marriage perhaps represents the ideal of human relationship—a setting in which each partner, while acknowledging the need of the other, feels free to be what he or she by nature is: a relationship in which instinct as well as intellect can find expression; in which giving and taking are equal; in which each accepts the other, and I confronts Thou.”
—Anthony Storr (b. 1920)