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Southwest Asia(The Middle East)
Location, Climate and Resources
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What is SW Asia?• Corner of huge Asian continent• Surrounded by 5 bodies of water
-- Red, Med, Black, Caspian, and Arabian Sea
• Crossroads for trading to Africa, Asia and Europe
• Conquered many times, each group leaves a cultural “footprint”
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Landforms• Not just all desert
• Turkey and Iran—mountains
• Rub’al-Khali – “empty quarter” sand sea in Saudi Arabia
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Landforms cont.
• Fresh water is very valuable• Major rivers– Tigris, Euphrates, Jordan • Persian Gulf important—oil and trading • Dead Sea -very salty, no life, float easily• Wadis—dry stream beds, water a few feet
below surface
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Climate• Most areas (not all) are
hot and dry
• Winds and elevation influence temp and precip
• Turkey and Iran get good amount of rain, produce food
• most of food has to be imported to region
• Irrigation is huge in area
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Oil and Gas
• 60% of the world’s oil
• Only a few countries have it though—most around Persian Gulf
• Oil allows countries to become 1st world
• These countries rely solely on oil –bad
• Natural gas usually found
near oil
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Resource Problems
• Many minerals have been depleted—used up
• Area used to have forests--deforestation