Flora and vegetation of Afghanistan

Afghanistan is a very mountainous country. It offers a big variety of ecological conditions, this means a big variety of vegetation types is covering land surface. These vegetation types are exhibiting a high biodiversity, since the floristic influence from various neighbour regions is a considerable factor in floristic and vegetation pattern. Afghanistan lies at the “crossroad” of several biogeographical regions. Afghanistan is a very dry country with scarce rainfalls but again very varying between north and south, west and east, lowlands and mountains. The eastern parts receive partly monsoonal rains in summer, which are the basis for the occurrence of various forest types, which, however, are strongly degraded or deforested nowadays. Herewith an overview is given on the main floristic features of the country as well as on the vegetation types by means of the map of the Potential Natural Vegetation (PNV), including the ecological conditions and the recent history of studies.