Nimruz, Afghanistan Photograph by Jerry Hassinger   Southern Asia: Southern Afghanistan into Pakistan and Iran Deserts and Xeric Shrublands   107,100 square miles (277,300 square kilometers) -- about the size of Georgia and North Carolina combined Vulnerable

· Location and General Description
· Biodiversity Features
· Current Status
· Threats
· Ecoregion Justification
· References
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Location and General Description

Biodiversity Features

Current Status

Types and Severity of Threats

Justification of Ecoregion Delineation

Ecoregion boundaries were defined using using Zohary’s (1973) geobotanical map of the Middle East. They include Zohary’s Iranian steppes of Artemisietea herbae-albae iranica east of the Kuh-e Gamsidzai and the Kuh-e Palangan. In Afghanistan, the semi-desert communities dominated by Calligonum-Aristida Haloxylon salicornicum and other chernopods from Freitag’s (1971) natural vegetation map were used for map lines. In Pakistan, this ecoregion corresponds to the sandy desert and thorn scrub forest of the Thar-Indus bioregion in Mackinnon’s (1997) original vegetation map of the Indo-Malayan biogeographic realm.

References

Freitag, H. 1971. Studies in the natural vegetation of Afghanistan. Pages 89-106 in P. H. Davis, Harper, and I. C. Hedge, editors. Plant life of South-West Asia. The Botanical Society of Edinburgh, Edinburgh.

Mackinnon, J., M. Sha, C. Cheung, G. Carey, Z. Xiang, and D. Melville. 1996. A biodiversity review of China. World Wide Fund for Nature, Hong Kong.

Zohary, M. 1973. Geobotanical foundations of the Middle East, volume1,2. Gustav Fischer Verlag, Stuttgart, Germany.

For more general information on this ecoregion, go to the WildWorld version of this description.