ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the basic physical environmental aspects of the Middle East—landforms, climate, soils, and natural vegetation. A basic tenet of geography is that physical features on the earth's surface and their related bioclimatic elements reciprocally interact with patterns of population, peoples, and human activities. Between the Red Sea and the Nile Valley, Egypt's Eastern Desert culminates in the Red Sea Hills, a moderately rugged and barren mountain mass of dominantly basement rocks. Environmental factor interacts with every other factor: precipitation affects vegetation, elevation affects temperature, and type of bedrock affects soils. The chapter presents the impact on human lives of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, hurricanes, sandstorms, tornadoes, floods, mudslides, and other phenomena that show that the environment is not simply a passive stage on which the human drama is enacted.
