MONGABAY.COM
Mongabay.com seeks to raise interest in and appreciation of wild lands and wildlife, while examining the impact of emerging trends in climate, technology, economics, and finance on conservation and development (more)
WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
|
|
Sudan
Index
Northern Sudan, lying between the Egyptian border and
Khartoum, has two distinct parts, the desert and the Nile Valley.
To the east of the Nile lies the Nubian Desert; to the west, the
Libyan Desert. They are similar--stony, with sandy dunes drifting
over the landscape. There is virtually no rainfall in these
deserts, and in the Nubian Desert there are no oases. In the west
there are a few small watering holes, such as Bir an Natrun,
where the water table reaches the surface to form wells that
provide water for nomads, caravans, and administrative patrols,
although insufficient to support an oasis and inadequate to
provide for a settled population. Flowing through the desert is
the Nile Valley, whose alluvial strip of habitable land is no
more than two kilometers wide and whose productivity depends on
the annual flood.
Western Sudan is a generic term describing the regions known
as Darfur and Kurdufan that comprise 850,000 square kilometers.
Traditionally, this has been regarded as a single regional unit
despite the physical differences. The dominant feature throughout
this immense area is the absence of perennial streams; thus,
people and animals must remain within reach of permanent wells.
Consequently, the population is sparse and unevenly distributed.
Western Darfur is an undulating plain dominated by the volcanic
massif of Jabal Marrah towering 900 meters above the Sudanic
plain; the drainage from Jabal Marrah onto the plain can support
a settled population. Western Darfur stands in stark contrast to
northern and eastern Darfur, which are semidesert with little
water either from the intermittent streams known as wadis or from
wells that normally go dry during the winter months. Northwest of
Darfur and continuing into Chad lies the unusual region called
the
jizzu (see Glossary),
where sporadic winter rains
generated from the Mediterranean frequently provide excellent
grazing into January or even February. The southern region of
western Sudan is known as the
qoz (see Glossary),
a land
of sand dunes that in the rainy season is characterized by a
rolling mantle of grass and has more reliable sources of water
with its bore holes and hafri (sing.,
hafr--see Glossary)
than does the north. A unique feature of western Sudan
is the Nuba Mountain range of southeast Kurdufan in the center of
the country, a conglomerate of isolated dome-shaped, sugarloaf
hills that ascend steeply and abruptly from the great Sudanic
plain. Many hills are isolated and extend only a few square
kilometers, but there are several large hill masses with internal
valleys that cut through the mountains high above the plain.
Sudan's third distinct region is the central clay plains that
stretch eastward from the Nuba Mountains to the Ethiopian
frontier, broken only by the Ingessana Hills, and from Khartoum
in the north to the far reaches of southern Sudan. Between the
Dindar and the Rahad rivers, a low ridge slopes down from the
Ethiopian highlands to break the endless skyline of the plains,
and the occasional hill stands out in stark relief. The central
clay plains provide the backbone of Sudan's economy because they
are productive where settlements cluster around available water.
Furthermore, in the heartland of the central clay plains lies the
jazirah (see Glossary),
the land between the Blue Nile and
the White Nile (literally in Arabic "peninsula") where the great
Gezira Scheme (also seen as Jazirah Scheme) was developed. This
project grows cotton for export and has traditionally produced
more than half of Sudan's revenue and export earnings.
Northeast of the central clay plains lies eastern Sudan,
which is divided between desert and semidesert and includes Al
Butanah, the Qash Delta, the Red Sea Hills, and the coastal
plain. Al Butanah is an undulating land between Khartoum and
Kassala that provides good grazing for cattle, sheep, and goats.
East of Al Butanah is a peculiar geological formation known as
the Qash Delta. Originally a depression, it has been filled with
sand and silt brought down by the flash floods of the Qash River,
creating a delta above the surrounding plain. Extending 100
kilometers north of Kassala, the whole area watered by the Qash
is a rich grassland with bountiful cultivation long after the
river has spent its waters on the surface of its delta. Trees and
bushes provide grazing for the camels from the north, and the
rich moist soil provides an abundance of food crops and cotton.
Northward beyond the Qash lie the more formidable Red Sea
Hills. Dry, bleak, and cooler than the surrounding land,
particularly in the heat of the Sudan summer, they stretch
northward into Egypt, a jumbled mass of hills where life is hard
and unpredictable for the hardy Beja inhabitants. Below the hills
sprawls the coastal plain of the Red Sea, varying in width from
about fifty-six kilometers in the south near Tawkar to about
twenty-four kilometers near the Egyptian frontier. The coastal
plain is dry and barren. It consists of rocks, and the seaward
side is thick with coral reefs.
The southern clay plains, which can be regarded as an
extension of the northern clay plains, extend all the way from
northern Sudan to the mountains on the Sudan-Uganda frontier, and
in the west from the borders of Central African Republic eastward
to the Ethiopian highlands. This great Nilotic plain is broken by
several distinctive features. First, the White Nile bisects the
plain and provides large permanent water surfaces such as lakes
Fajarial, No, and Shambe. Second, As Sudd, the world's largest
swamp, provides a formidable expanse of lakes, lagoons, and
aquatic plants, whose area in high flood waters exceeds 30,000
square kilometers, or approximately the size of Belgium. So
intractable was this
sudd (see Glossary)
as an obstacle to
navigation that a passage was not discovered until the midnineteenth century. Then as now, As Sudd with its extreme rate of
evaporation consumes on average more than half the waters that
come down the White Nile from the equatorial lakes. These waters
also create a flood plain known as the toic that provides
grazing when the flood waters retreat to the permanent swamp and
sluggish river, the Bahr al Jabal, as the White Nile is called
here.
The land rising to the south and west of the southern clay
plain is referred to as the Ironstone Plateau (Jabal Hadid), a
name derived from its laterite soils and increasing elevation.
The plateau rises from the west bank of the Nile, sloping
gradually upward to the Congo-Nile watershed. The land is well
watered, providing rich cultivation, but the streams and rivers
that come down from the watershed divide and erode the land
before flowing on to the Nilotic plain flow into in As Sudd.
Along the streams of the watershed are the gallery forests, the
beginnings of the tropical rain forests that extend far into
Zaire. To the east of the Jabal Hadid and the Bahr al Jabal rise
the foothills of the mountain ranges along the Sudan-Uganda
border--the Imatong, Didinga, and Dongotona--which rise to more
than 3,000 meters. These mountains form a stark contrast to the
great plains to the north that dominate Sudan's geography.
Data as of June 1991
|
|