The West Sahara Desert ecoregion is a vast expanse of the western Sahara, spanning Algeria, Libya, and Mauritania within the Palearctic realm. It is a largely barren landscape where plant life is confined to oases and seasonally wet spots fed by groundwater, supporting hardy genera such as Acacia, tamarisk, and certain milkweeds; even so, its scattered shrubs and grasses are somewhat more diverse than those of the eastern Sahara because it receives marginally more rain. The climate is harshly arid, with annual rainfall below 100 millimeters, mean annual temperatures above 30 degrees Celsius, summer highs exceeding 50 degrees Celsius, and nights that can fall below freezing. Its flagship species is the fennec fox, the smallest canid in the world, and it shelters the endangered slender-horned (rhim) gazelle, the palest of the gazelles, alongside the critically endangered addax. The ecoregion currently has no formal protection, with hunting pressure rather than habitat loss its primary threat.

At a glance

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.

Catalog plants suited to this ecoregion

Computed from each plant's stated USDA zone range against this ecoregion's CHELSA-derived current zone range, with the CHELSA mid-century warming delta applied for the projection. Plants whose stated range falls outside both the current and projected zone end up dropped; the rest land in one of the three buckets below.

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.

Related ecoregions