11 Facts About Mediterranean Basin

In biogeography, the Mediterranean Basin is the region of lands around the Mediterranean Sea that have mostly a Mediterranean climate, with mild to cool, rainy winters and warm to hot, dry summers, which supports characteristic Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub vegetation.

Mediterranean Basin covers portions of three continents: Europe, Africa, and Asia.

The Mediterranean Basin Region offers an ever-changing landscape of high mountains, rocky shores, impenetrable scrub, semi-arid steppes, coastal wetlands, sandy beaches and a myriad islands of various shapes and sizes dotted amidst the clear blue sea.

Northern portion of the Maghreb region of northwestern Africa has a Mediterranean Basin climate, separated from the Sahara Desert, which extends across North Africa, by the Atlas Mountains.

Mediterranean Basin was shaped by the ancient collision of the northward-moving African–Arabian continent with the stable Eurasian continent.

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About 6 mya during the late Miocene, the Mediterranean Basin was closed at its western end by drifting Africa, which caused the entire sea to evaporate.

Fossil evidence shows that the Mediterranean Basin had a relatively humid subtropical climate with summer rainfall during the Miocene, which supported laurel forests.

The subtropical laurel forests retreated, although they persisted on the islands of Macaronesia off the Atlantic coast of Iberia and North Africa, and the present Mediterranean Basin vegetation evolved, dominated by coniferous trees and sclerophyllous trees and shrubs, with small, hard, waxy leaves that prevent moisture loss in the dry summers.

Mediterranean Basin is the largest of the world's five Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub regions.

Mediterranean Basin is home to considerable biodiversity, including 22, 500 endemic vascular plant species.

Endangered mammals of the Mediterranean Basin include the Mediterranean monk seal, the Barbary macaque, and the Iberian lynx.