page_title: Geography of Namibia
section_title: Kalahari Desert
hierarchical_section_title: Geography of Namibia / Geographical areas / Kalahari Desert
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Gewitter in der Kalahari bei Stampriet, Namibia English: Thunderstorm in the Kalahari near Stampriet, Namibia
context_page_description: At 824,292 km², Namibia is the world's thirty-fourth largest country. After Mongolia, Namibia is the second least densely populated country in the world.
context_section_description: The Kalahari Desert is perhaps Namibia’s best known geographical feature. Shared with South Africa and Botswana, it has a variety of localised environments ranging from hyper-arid sandy desert, to areas that seem to defy the common definition of desert. One of these areas, known as the Succulent Karoo, is home to over 5,000 species of plants, nearly half of them endemic; fully one-third of the world’s succulents are found in the Karoo.
  The reason behind this high productivity and endemism may be the relatively stable nature of precipitation. The Karoo apparently does not experience drought on a regular basis, so even though the area is technically desert, regular winter rains provide enough moisture to support the region’s interesting plant community. Another feature of the Kalahari, indeed many parts of Namibia, are inselbergs, isolated mountains that create microclimates and habitat for organisms not adapted to life in the surrounding desert matrix.
caption: Thunderstorm in the Kalahari near Stampriet
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