Great Sandy-Tanami desert

Great Sandy-Tanami desert
	Great Sandy Desert, Australia
Ecology
Realm	Australasian
Biome	deserts and xeric shrublands
Borders	List Central Ranges xeric scrub; Gibson Desert; Great Victoria Desert; Kimberley tropical savanna; Mitchell Grass Downs; Pilbara shrublands; Simpson Desert; Victoria Plains tropical savanna; Western Australian mulga shrublands;
Geography
Area	823,784 km2 (318,065 sq mi)
Country	Australia
States	Northern Territory and Western Australia
Conservation
Conservation status	Relatively stable/intact
Protected	260,900 km² (32%)[1]

The Great Sandy-Tanami desert is a World Wildlife Fund ecoregion of Western Australia extending into the Northern Territory.[2]

Centrailian-Bluetongue-skink in the Tanami Desert

Little Sandy Desert

Tanami Track

Location and description

This very large ecoregion consists of the Little Sandy Desert, Great Sandy Desert, and Tanami Desert Interim Biogeographic Regionalisation for Australia (IBRA) regions,.[3][4] The landscape is desert sands with areas of wooded steppe and shrubby grassland. The Great Sandy Desert is a large area of red desert sand dunes, while the Tanami Desert to the east is flat sand broken up with areas of hills. One prominent landmark in the region is the large sandstone rock Uluru. The climate is hot and dry and the area is mostly uninhabited.

Flora

The vegetation is very thin and consists of spinifex grass and saltbush shrubs that are adapted to the desert conditions. There are also occasional acacias and desert oaks.

Fauna

Much of the wildlife of this hot climate is nocturnal including the rabbit-sized marsupial the Bilby and the Rufous hare-wallabies of the Tanami Desert. The wildlife of these deserts includes communities of wild camels, descendants of animals brought here as transport in earlier times.

Protected areas

Protected areas in the ecoregion include Iytwelepenty / Davenport Range National Park, Karlamilyi National Park, and Uluṟu-Kata Tjuṯa National Park.

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External links

"Great Sandy-Tanami desert". Terrestrial Ecoregions. World Wildlife Fund.

References

Eric Dinerstein, David Olson, et al. (2017). An Ecoregion-Based Approach to Protecting Half the Terrestrial Realm, BioScience, Volume 67, Issue 6, June 2017, Pages 534–545; Supplemental material 2 table S1b.
"Great Sandy-Tanami desert". Terrestrial Ecoregions. World Wildlife Fund.
Environment Australia. "Revision of the Interim Biogeographic Regionalisation for Australia (IBRA) and Development of Version 5.1 - Summary Report". Department of the Environment and Water Resources, Australian Government. Archived from the original on 5 September 2006. Retrieved 31 January 2007. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
IBRA Version 6.1 Archived 8 September 2006 at the Wayback Machine data