Arabian-Persian Gulf coastal plain desert
RESOLVE 811
The Arabian-Persian Gulf Coastal Plain Desert traces the eastern seaboard of the Arabian Peninsula along the Arabian-Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman, taking in coastal stretches of Kuwait, eastern Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman while encompassing the entire land area of Qatar and Bahrain. It is a mosaic of low coastal habitats: rocky shores, intertidal mudflats, salt marshes known as sabkha, gravel hammada, sand dunes, and pockets of Avicennia mangrove, where vegetation is dominated by salt-tolerant halophytes and sparse desert shrubs and grasses such as Haloxylon salicornicum, Rhanterium, and the sedge Cyperus conglomeratus. The climate is hot and intensely arid, with annual rainfall below roughly 100 millimeters across most of the region. These shores form a haven for wildlife, hosting the world's largest breeding population of the Socotra cormorant alongside sand gazelle, wintering shorebirds, and sandy beaches that serve as nesting sites for several threatened sea turtle species. Only about four percent of the ecoregion is protected, and coastal development, overgrazing, and overfishing remain the principal threats.
About the deserts & xeric shrublands biome
Arid and semi-arid lands where low, erratic rainfall and high evaporation limit vegetation to drought-adapted shrubs, succulents, and sparse grasses. Day-to-night temperature swings are large, and life is finely tuned to water scarcity.
Collections for this ecoregion
No curated collection's plants all fit this ecoregion's zone range. We surface a collection only when every member would grow here — partial fits get filtered out rather than mislead. As the catalog and the curated set both grow, this section will fill in.