Libya: Encyclopedia II - Libya - Geography

Libya - Geography

Libya extends over 1,759,540 km², making it the 16th largest nation in the world. It is bound to the west by Tunisia and Algeria, the southwest by Niger, the south by Chad and Sudan and to the east by Egypt. The country is also bound to the north by the Mediterranean Sea. The climate is a mostly dry, desert climate. The North however enjoys a milder Mediterranean climate.

Geographic regions: Cyrenaica, Tripolitania, and Fezzan.

The chief cities are the capital Tripoli in northwest Libya and Benghazi, the country's second city. Other significant cities include Misratah, Sirte and Sabha.

Natural hazards: hot, dry, dust-laden sirocco (known in Libya as the ghibli) is a southern wind lasting one to four days in spring and fall; dust storms, sandstorms.

Oases: Ghadames, Kufra, many others.

Libya - The Libyan Desert

The Libyan Desert is one of the most arid places on earth. In places decades may pass without any rain, and even in the highlands rainfall happens erratically, once every 5-10 years. At Uweinat, the last recorded rainfall was in September 1998. With such dryness, one would expect the desert to be totally lifeless. Yet there is a surprising abundance of lifeforms. There is a large depression, the Qattara depression, just to the south of the northernmost scarp, with Siwa oasis at its western extremity. The depression continues in a shallower form west, to the oases of Jaghbub and Jalo. There are other inhabited oases, Baharya, Farafra, Dakhla & Kharga west of the Nile in Egypt. There are a few scattered uninhabited small oases, usually linked to the major depressions, where water can be found by digging to a few feet in depth. In the west, in Libya, there is a widely dispersed group of oases in unconnected shallow depressions, the Kufra group, consisting of Tazerbo, Rebiana and Kufra. Aside the scarps, the general flatness is only interrupted by a series of plateaus and massifs near the centre of the Libyan Desert, around the convergence of the Egyptian-Sudanese-Libyan Borders. The Gilf Kebir plateau rises about 300 metres above the general plain, and lies entirely in Egypt. It roughly equals Switzerland in size, and is similar in structure to the other sandstone plateaus of the central Sahara. It's South-eastern part is well defined on all sides, with sheer cliffs and deep, narrow wadis. The North-east part, separated from the other half by a broad valley called the "Gap" is more broken, and supports three large wadis with live vegetation.

Slightly further to the south are the massifs of Arkenu, Uweinat and Kissu. These granite mountains are very ancient, having formed much before the sandstones surrounding them. Arkenu and Western Uweinat are ring complexes very similar to those in the Air mountains. Eastern Uweinat (the highest point in the Libyan desert) is a raised sandstone plateau adjacent to the granite part further west. The plain to the north of Uweinat is doted with eroded volcanic features.

In 1996 the movie "The English Patient" raised public interest in, if not awareness, of the Libyan desert.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Geography", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki