East Sahara Desert
RESOLVE 822
The East Sahara Desert is a hyper-arid ecoregion in the Deserts and Xeric Shrublands biome of the Palearctic realm, covering the central Sahara across Algeria, Niger, Libya, Chad, Egypt, and Sudan. Its landscape ranges from vast sand-dune seas to stony plateaus, gravel plains, dry wadis, and salt flats, and the flora is correspondingly sparse, dominated by xerophytes and ephemeral plants known locally as Acheb, with halophytes in moister ground. Woody vegetation is largely confined to the wadis and dayas, where Acacia, Tamarix, and Calotropis procera persist. The climate is extreme, with high summer temperatures, cooler winters, and annual rainfall below 25 mm that may fail entirely for years before a single intense thunderstorm. The hooded wheatear is the ecoregion's flagship species, and several desert antelopes such as the slender-horned, dama, and red-fronted gazelles survive in small numbers, while the critically endangered addax has been extirpated here. For arid-garden inspiration, the native Acacia and Tamarix illustrate the kind of drought-hardy genera adapted to such waterless conditions.
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.