When thinking of Africa, you may have difficulty getting a good mental image os the kind of landscape you expect to find there. Africa has a very varied ecosystem and landscapes change widely as you traverse the large continent. With the Serengeti in Tanzania being one of the most popular safari destinations, you may have asked yourself if the Serengeti is A desert.
The Serengeti is not a Desert. It is a grassland savannah comprised of rolling grassland landscapes dotted with acacia trees and thorny bushes. Some parts of the Serengeti have larger numbers of acacia trees and it would be classified as woodland. In this article, I will explain why the Serengeti is not classified as a desert and the kind of landscape you expect to find there when you visit. I will also talk about the areas in Tanzania that are more desert-like.
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Definition of Desert
When you think of a desert, you may think of sand dunes and sandstorms but the definition of deserts is more nuanced than this. According to this article a desert is an area that receives less than 10 inches of rain per year and whose ground is mostly bare with little or no vegetation.
Does Tanzania have any deserts?
The annual rainfall in the Serengeti is 38.6 inches per year and the average vegetation is vast grasslands dotted with many Acacia trees. the Serengeti is obviously not a tropical jungle, but neither is it a desert.
Serengeti’s landscape
The Serengeti is composed of Acacia woodland and grasslands savannas with tall grass and the occasional shrubs and bushes. some parts of the Serengeti also have Rocky outcrops and ravines.
The Serengeti remains relatively Green with the two rainy Seasons supplying enough water to nourish the plants throughout the dry months.
National Parks located in desert environments
In Africa there are very few national parks located in actual desert. This is because he is very little to see in a desert environment and it may not make for a very interesting safari experience.
As I was doing research for this article I only found one national park in Africa that is located in an actual desert. This is the The Namib-Naukluft Park located in the Western coast of Namibia.
The animal populations here are low and difficult to locate. However the park has some of the tallest sand dunes in the world and the landscapes are breathtakingly beautiful.
