Kalahari Desert northwest, forming marshes that are rich in wildlife. Ancient dry riverbeds—called omuramba—traverse the central northern reaches of the Kalahari and provide standing pools of water during the rainy season. A semi-desert, with huge tracts of excellent grazing after good rains, the Kalahari supports more animals and plants than a true desert, such as the Namib Desert to the west. There are small amounts of rainfall and the summer temperature is very high. The driest areas usually receive of rain per year, and the wettest just a little over . The surrounding Kalahari Basin covers over extending further into Botswana, Namibia
Kalahari Desert Kalahari, except on salt pans during the dry season, the vegetation cover can be clearly denser, up to almost 100% in some limited areas. In an area of about 600,000 km in the south and west of the Kalahari, the vegetation is mainly xeric savanna. This area is the ecoregion identified by World Wide Fund for Nature as Kalahari xeric savanna AT1309. Typical savanna grasses include ("Schmidtia", "Stipagrostis", "Aristida", and "Eragrostis") interspersed with trees such as camelthorn ("Acacia erioloba"), grey camelthorn ("Acacia haematoxylon"), shepherd’s tree ("Boscia albitrunca"), blackthorn ("Acacia mellifera"), and silver cluster-leaf ("Terminalia sericea"). In certain areas where the