Saharan

Saharan refers to anything relating to the Sahara Desert, the world's largest hot desert, located in North Africa. The Sahara spans roughly 9 million square kilometers and crosses several states, including Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Sudan, and Tunisia, with portions in Western Sahara. The landscape comprises dunes, rocky plateaus, and gravel plains, with oases providing settlements.

Climate is hyper-arid to arid, with annual rainfall often below 50 millimeters and extreme temperature fluctuations. Conditions support a suite of specially adapted plants and animals, but biodiversity is limited and sensitive to disturbance. Common desert flora includes drought-tolerant shrubs and palm trees in oases. Fauna includes camels, foxes, gerbils, and the addax; some species face threats from habitat loss and overexploitation.

Human presence dates back millennia, with nomadic and semi-nomadic groups such as Tuareg and other Berber-speaking peoples shaping cultural exchange across trans-Saharan routes. In antiquity and the medieval era, the Sahara connected sub-Saharan Africa with North Africa and the Mediterranean through long-distance trade in salt, gold, and later Islamic scholarship. In the modern era, national borders and resource development—oil and gas in the eastern and Libyan regions, mining, and tourism—define much of the Sahara’s economy, while traditional pastoralism and oasis agriculture continue in many areas.

Environmental pressures include desertification, climate variability, and groundwater depletion, prompting conservation and sustainable-use efforts in several protected areas, such as the Ahaggar and Tassili n’Ajjer regions.