Description
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.
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