ABSTRACT
A number of major relief regions can be distinguished in South-Western Africa. The Great Escarpment is no longer present as a definite feature; indeed, the Cuanza and other streams have pushed back the watershed between the Atlantic and Congo drainage until it lies up to 300 miles from the coast. It cannot be described as a lowland: with a minimum elevation generally of 3,000 feet, 'plateau' would be a more correct description. In response to variations in climate and in degree of alteration by man, the vegetation ranges from tropical forest to savanna in central Angola; with increasing dryness the savanna thins and is replaced by Karroo and desert shrub associations. The Kalahari vegetation varies generally from poor grassland in the south, through an extensive area of mixed thorn forest (with abundant acacias) and coarse grass, to open forest of Mopani and Brachystegia in the upper Zambezi area of the north.
