Nubian desert

Nubian desert (in the south), Arabian desert (in the north)

The Nubian Desert is located in North Africa and forms the easternmost part of the Sahara desert . It is located in northern Sudan and stretches from the Nile to the Red Sea, bordering the Libyan Desert in the west .

The continuation of the arid dry area north of Lake Nasser in Egypt is part of the Arabian Desert . In the central area of the desert around Wadi Halfa , precipitation is less than 5 mm in the annual mean and can be completely absent for years or decades. Precipitation increases upstream of the Nile, in Dongola already 25 mm per year is measured, which mostly falls in August. Further south in Khartoum , with similarly barren or non-existent vegetation, in the summer months sometimes heavy rainfall occurs. On the Red Sea, in the area of Port Sudan , rainfall can also occur in the dry and cooler season in winter.

In contrast to the Libyan desert, there are hardly any sand dunes ( Erg ), but rather flat sand areas ( Serir ) below 500 m above sea level, which are interspersed with scree and individual island mountains or mountain ranges of encrusted and therefore sharp-edged, but generally brittle and erosion-prone sandstones . The subsoil consists of a Mesozoic sandstone plinth. The terrain rises from the Nile to the east. The highest peaks are located in a mountain range that runs parallel to the Red Sea and, with the mountain Oda, reach a height of 2259 m. This is followed by a coastal foreland, which is about 60 kilometers wide in the south on the Eritrean border to a 20 kilometers wide strip on the Egyptian border and consists of sandy and clay soils without vegetation.

In the Nubian Desert there are no oases and only a few water points. Several deep wells were drilled to build and operate the railway between Wadi Halfa and Abu Hamad .

Nubian desert

See also