Country

Saudi Arabia: 11 ecoregions. Each with its climate now and toward 2050, and its conservation tier.

Eleven ecoregions cover Saudi Arabia, and nine of them are deserts and xeric shrublands: the vast Arabian desert and Arabian sand desert at the core, the North Arabian desert toward the Levant, Red Sea-Arabian Desert shrublands along the west, and the Gulf coastal plain desert in the east. The exceptions cluster in the southwest, where the Afrotropic realm reaches in: the Southwest Arabian Escarpment shrublands and woodlands and the montane woodlands and grasslands bring cooler, greener highland conditions, and Indus River Delta-Arabian Sea mangroves fringe parts of the coast. Planting here means working with extreme heat, aridity, and salt-tolerant palettes almost everywhere, with the Asir highlands the one region where woodland species belong. The southwest coastal and highland xeric units rate Nature Imperiled.