The Tagant Plateau is located in eastern
Mauritania
Mauritania, officially the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, is a sovereign country in Maghreb, Northwest Africa. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Western Sahara to Mauritania–Western Sahara border, the north and northwest, ...
, forming a stony part of the
Sahara Desert
The Sahara (, ) is a desert spanning across North Africa. With an area of , it is the largest hot desert in the world and the list of deserts by area, third-largest desert overall, smaller only than the deserts of Antarctica and the northern Ar ...
. The
Tagant Region, a national administrative division, is named after the plateau.
Geography
Some towns are located at the foot of the Tagant Plateau's slopes, which form
cliff
In geography and geology, a cliff or rock face is an area of Rock (geology), rock which has a general angle defined by the vertical, or nearly vertical. Cliffs are formed by the processes of weathering and erosion, with the effect of gravity. ...
s in some places. Among these areas are
Tichit,
Moudjéria and
Rachid.
Tidjikdja lies on the Tagant itself. The
Assaba Massif, where
Late Ordovician glacial formations have been identified, is a southward prolongation of the Tagant Plateau. The
Aoukar, the dry basin of a former lake lies beyond the southern escarpments of the Tagant Plateau.
History
Beginning in mid-17th century, migrants from the
Adrar Plateau region moved in and displaced the native population of the Tagant Plateau, the
Toucouleur people, who now inhabit
Futa Toro
Futa Toro (Wolof language, Wolof and , , ; ), often simply the Futa, is a semidesert region around the middle run of the Senegal River. This region, along the border of Senegal and Mauritania, is historically significant as the center of several F ...
along the
Senegal river
The Senegal River ( or "Senegal" - compound of the Serer term "Seen" or "Sene" or "Sen" (from Roog Seen, Supreme Deity in Serer religion) and "O Gal" (meaning "body of water")); , , , ) is a river in West Africa; much of its length mark ...
.
The Tartega Gueltas
oasis
In ecology, an oasis (; : oases ) is a fertile area of a desert or semi-desert environment[wetlands
A wetland is a distinct semi-aquatic ecosystem whose groundcovers are flooded or saturated in water, either permanently, for years or decades, or only seasonally. Flooding results in oxygen-poor ( anoxic) processes taking place, especially ...]
in the region where there were still
desert crocodiles in 1976. The population was reported to be extinct in 1996, but as of 2011 was still present, particularly in the
Lake Gabou area.
See also
*
Dhar Tichitt
*
Geography of Mauritania
References
External links
1.3 Mauritania - Ramsar Sites Information Service
Landforms of Mauritania
Plateaus of Africa
Natural regions of Africa
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