North Saharan steppe and woodlands

North Saharan steppe and woodlands
Souss-Massa National Park in Morocco
Map of North Africa with ecoregion territory in purple
Ecology
Realm	Palearctic
Biome	Deserts and xeric shrublands
Borders	List Arabian Desert and East Sahero-Arabian xeric shrublands Atlantic coastal desert Mediterranean dry woodlands and steppe Nile Delta flooded savanna Sahara desert Saharan halophytics Sahelian Acacia savanna South Saharan steppe and woodlands West Saharan montane xeric woodlands
Geography
Area	1,675,300 km2 (646,800 sq mi)
Countries	List Algeria Egypt Libya Mauritania Morocco Tunisia Western Sahara
Conservation
Conservation status	relatively intact
Protected	0.69%[1]

The North Saharan steppe and woodlands is a desert ecoregion, in the deserts and xeric shrublands biome, that forms the northern edge of the Sahara. It extends east and west across Northern Africa, south of the Mediterranean dry woodlands and steppe ecoregion of the Maghreb and Cyrenaica, which is part of the Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub biome. Winter rains sustain shrublands and dry woodlands that form an ecotone between the Mediterranean climate regions to the north and the hyper-arid Sahara Desert ecoregion to the south.