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In biogeography, the Mediterranean basin ( ), also known as the Mediterranean region or sometimes Mediterranea, is the region of lands around the Mediterranean Sea that mostly have a Mediterranean climate, with mild to cool, rainy and warm to hot, dry , which supports characteristic Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub vegetation.
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The Mediterranean basin covers portions of three continents: Africa, Asia, and Europe. It is not the same as the drainage basin of the Mediterranean Sea; the drainage basin is larger, as rivers including the Nile and Rhône reach further into Africa and Europe. Conversely, the Mediterranean basin includes regions not in the drainage basin, such as Iraq, Jordan, and Portugal.
It has a varied and contrasting topography. The Mediterranean region offers a varied landscape of high mountains, rocky shores, impenetrable scrub, semi-arid steppes, coastal wetlands, sandy beaches and a myriad of islands of various shapes and sizes dotted amidst the clear blue sea. Contrary to the classic sandy beach images portrayed in most tourist brochures, the Mediterranean is surprisingly hilly. Mountains can be seen from almost anywhere.
By definition, the Mediterranean basin extends from Macaronesia in the west to the Levant in the east, although some places may or may not be included depending on the view, as is the case with Macaronesia: some definitions only include the Canary Islands and Madeira while others include the whole Macaronesia (with the Azores and Cape Verde).
The northern portion of the Maghreb region of north-western Africa has a Mediterranean climate, separated from the Sahara, which extends across North Africa, by the Atlas Mountains. In the eastern Mediterranean, the Sahara extends to the southern shore of the Mediterranean, with the exception of the northern fringe of the peninsula of Cyrenaica in Libya, which has a dry Mediterranean climate.
In West Asia, it covers the western and southern portions of the Anatolia, as far as Iraq, but excluding the temperate-climate mountains of central Turkey. It includes the Mediterranean Levant at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, bounded on the east and south by the Negev and Syrian Desert deserts.
Europe lies to the north of the Mediterranean. The European portion of the Mediterranean basin loosely corresponds to Southern Europe. The three large Southern European peninsulas, the Apennine Peninsula, the Balkans, and the Iberian Peninsula, extend into and comprise much of the Mediterranean-climate zone. A system of folded mountains, including the Pyrenees dividing Spain from France, the Alps dividing Italy from Central Europe, the Dinaric Alps along the eastern Adriatic, and the Balkan Mountains and Rila-Rhodope mountains of the Balkan Peninsula divide the Mediterranean from the temperate climate regions of Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and Northern Europe, North-western, or Western Europe Europe.
About 6 mya during the late Miocene, the Mediterranean was closed at its western end by drifting Africa, which caused the entire sea to evaporate. There followed several (debated) episodes of sea drawdown and re-flooding known as the Messinian Salinity Crisis, which ended when the Atlantic last re-flooded the basin at the end of the Miocene. Recent research has suggested that a desiccation-flooding cycle may have repeated several times during the last 630,000 years of the Miocene epoch, which could explain several events of large amounts of salt deposition. Recent studies, however, show that repeated desiccation and re-flooding is unlikely from a geodynamic point of view.
The end of the Miocene also marked a change in the Mediterranean basin's climate. Fossil evidence shows that the Mediterranean basin had a relatively humid subtropical climate with summer rainfall during the Miocene, which supported . The shift to a Mediterranean climate occurred within the last 3.2–2.8 million years, during the Pliocene epoch, as summer rainfall decreased. 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 vegetation evolved, dominated by coniferous trees and sclerophyllous trees and shrubs, with small, hard, waxy leaves that prevent moisture loss in the dry summers. Much of these forests and shrublands have been altered beyond recognition by thousands of years of human habitation. There are now very few relatively intact natural areas in what was once a heavily wooded region.
The Mediterranean region was first proposed by German botanist August Grisebach in the late 19th century.
The Mediterranean basin is a hotspot of plant diversity with many endemic species. The genera Aubrieta, Sesamoides, Cynara, Dracunculus, Arisarum and Biarum are nearly endemic. Among the endemic species prominent in the Mediterranean vegetation are the Aleppo pine, stone pine, Mediterranean cypress, bay laurel, Oriental sweetgum, Quercus ilex, kermes oak, Arbutus unedo, Greek strawberry tree, mastic, terebinth, common myrtle, oleander, Acanthus mollis and Vitex agnus-castus. Moreover, many plant taxa are shared with one of the four neighbouring floristic regions only. According to different versions of Armen Takhtajan's delineation, the Mediterranean region is further subdivided into seven to nine floristic provinces: Southwestern Mediterranean (or Southern Moroccan and Southwestern Mediterranean), Ibero-Balearian (or Iberian and Balearian), Liguro-Tyrrhenian, Adriatic, East Mediterranean, South Mediterranean and Crimeo-Novorossiysk.
The Mediterranean basin is the largest of the world's five Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub regions. It is home to a number of plant communities, which vary with rainfall, elevation, latitude, and soil.
The Mediterranean basin is home to considerable biodiversity, including 22,500 endemic vascular plant species. Conservation International designates the region as a biodiversity hotspot, because of its rich biodiversity and its threatened status. The Mediterranean basin has an area of 2,085,292 km2, of which only 98,009 km2 remains undisturbed.
Endangered of the Mediterranean basin include the Mediterranean monk seal, the Barbary macaque, and the Iberian lynx.
The most recent glacial period, the Wisconsin glaciation (Würm in Southern European contexts), reached its maximum extent approximately 21,000 years ago, and ended approximately 12,000 years ago. A warm period, known as the Holocene climatic optimum, followed the ice age.
Food crops, including wheat, , and , along with sheep and , were domestication in the eastern Mediterranean in the 9th millennium BCE, which allowed for the establishment of agricultural settlements. Near Eastern crops spread to southeastern Europe in the 7th millennium BCE. Poppy and were domesticated in Europe from the 6th to the 3rd millennium BCE. Agricultural settlements spread around the Mediterranean basin. were constructed in Europe from 4500 – 1500 BCE.
A strengthening of the summer monsoon 9000–7000 years ago increased rainfall across the Sahara, which became a grassland, with lakes, rivers, and wetlands. After a period of climatic instability, the Sahara settled into a desert state by the 4th millennium BCE.
The Arab Agricultural Revolution brought a new combination of foods to Portugal, Spain, and Sicily in the Middle Ages. Those foods included aubergines, spinach, sugar cane, rice, , and . The Columbian Exchange in the early modern period added the tomato and the haricot bean.
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Categories: Mediterranean Basin, Drainage Basins Of The Mediterranean Sea, Environment Of The Mediterranean, Mediterranean Forests, Woodlands, And Scrub, Palearctic Realm, Palearctic Ecoregions, Natural History Of Europe, Levant, Floristic Regions, Regions Of Europe, Geography Of North Africa, Geography Of West Asia, Geography Of The Middle East, Regions Of Africa
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