Geography of South Africa and Lowveld is the southern basin of the Kalahari Desert, which borders Namibia and Botswana at an elevation of 600 meters to 900 meters. The western section of South Africa on the inland side of the Cape Fold Mountains is dominated by the Great Karoo, a semi-desert region that is divided by the Great Escarpment into the Upper Karoo (at an elevation of 1100–1600 m) and the Lower Karoo (at an elevation of 600–800 m). Separated from the Great Karoo by the Swartberg mountain range is the Little Karoo. In the southwest, running parallel to the coastline, the mountains of
Ryn Desert can drop to a low of . Many small towns are scattered throughout the Ryn Desert, and population density is between 1 and 15 people per square mile. The Ryn lies in a semi-arid climate zone, and receives very little rainfall. High winds sweep across the desert, and in 2001 a dust storm in the Baltic Sea was determined as originating in the Ryn Desert. A study of long-range dust transportation to the Baltic Sea region—by analyzing dust pollution in Scandinavia, showed that aerosol concentrations there were influenced more by the Ryn Desert region than the Sahara Desert in Africa.