Global Environment.com

Africa

Lying athwart the Equator, but extending to some 35° north and south, the vast continent Africa covers a wide range of environments. The Sahara Desert stretches across northern Africa from west to east, containing the mountain massifs of Hoggar and Tibesti; lowlands to the east are threaded through from south to north by the Nile river valley. Mediterranean Africa, lying north of the Sahara, includes the sharply folded and eroded Atlas Mountains; the coastal and Nile valley lands were the home of the ancient civilization of Egypt, with rich evidence of early Phoenician, Greek, Roman and Moslem contacts.

South of the Sahara, Africa may be divided by the 3,000 ft contour line running from the south-west (Angola) to the north-east (Ethiopia). North of this line the low plateau of central and west Africa surround the great basins of the Congo and Niger rivers and the inland basin of Lake Chad. Here are Africa's major areas of tropical rain forest with savanna dominant on the inner and higher ground. East and south of the 3,000 ft contour lie Africa's highest plateau and mountain massifs, and the complex rift-valley systems of north-eastern and eastern Africa.

The rift valleys of east Africa are part of the most extensive fissure in the earth's crust, extending south from the Dead Sea, down the Red Sea, across the Ethiopian Highlands, through Kenya to reach the sea again near the mouth of the Zambezi. Both this main rift and its principal branch to the west of Lake Victoria contain deep, long lakes of which Tanganyika, Turkana, and Nyasa are the largest. The rift valleys are also associated with great snowcapped peaks - notably Kilimanjaro and Mt Kenya. Here are also the high, open, and grassy savanna plains with most of Africa's famous wildlife game parks. South and west of the Zambezi river system lie the arid uplands of the Kalahari and Namib deserts, and the dry highlands of Nambia. In the far south a damper climate brings Mediterranean conditions to the plains of South Africa, and to the Drakensberg and Cape ranges.

Sahara Desert

Mount kenya