Physical Geography and Environmental Issues
The buildup of toxic salts in the soil, which is an ancient environmental issue in this region.
What is salinization?
The number of people per unit area of arable land. This is quite high by global standards for this particular region.
What is physiological density?
The sport that plays a hugely important cultural role in everyday life within the region both as a spectator sport and as an activity that many young people enjoy.
This type of colonialism arrived relatively late in Southwest Asia and North Africa, but the era left an important imprint on the region's modern political geography.
What is European?
More orthodox Islamic states impose legal restrictions on the activities of who? Some are prohibited from driving and have some of the world's lowest participation rates in the workforce.
Who are women?
Water supplies that is stored underground during earlier and wetter climatic periods that is being mined in this region
What is fossil water?
They transport much-needed water from more humid areas to drier regions suffering from long-term moisture deficits. The Nile and the combined Tigris and Euphrates rivers are examples.
What are exotic rivers
The belief in one God, what Jewish history recounted in the Old Testament of the Bible.
This is European-engineered and linked the Mediterranean and Red seas in 1869. It allows European banks and trading companies gain more influence over the Egyptian economy.
What is the Suez Canal?
With only 7 percent of the world's population, the region holds over half of the world's proven what.
What are oil reserves?
This is where narrow waterways are vulnerable to military blockade or disruption.
What are choke points?
What is pastoral nomadism?
The religion-based dietary preference in Islam, that shapes food consumption patterns, both within the region and globally.
What is halal?
What are the Kurds?
A phenomenon where some of a countries brightest young people leave for better jobs in Western Europe of the United States.
What is the brain drain?
This, meaning western island, includes the nations of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia and is dominated near the Mediterranean coast by the Atlas Mountains.
What is the Maghreb?
A practice where nomads seasonally move livestock to cooler, greener high-country pastures in the summer and return them to valley and lowland settings for fall and winter grazing. This happens in zones such as the Atlas Mountains and the Anatolian Plateau.
What is transhumance?
A religious pilgrimage to Muhammad's birthplace of Makkah that is one of the five essential activities in Islam.
What is Hajj?
A regional political and economic organization focused on Arab unity and development. The Arab community reacted against Assad and suspended Syria from this.
What is the Arab League?
An international organization formed in 1960 that attempts to influence the global prices and supplies of oil.
What is the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)?
The eastern Mediterranean region where mountains rise within 20 miles of the sea, and the highlands of Lebanon reach heights of more than 10,000 feet.
What is the Levant?
An ecologically diverse zone stretching from the Levant inland through the fertile hill country of northern Syria into Iraq.
What is the Fertile Crescent?
An Islamic group that favored passing on religious authority within Muhammad's family, specifically to Ali, his son-in-law.
What is Shiites?
This authority continued to strongly protest these new West Bank Jewish settlements near Israel's capital, especially in an area that sits on hills just east of Jerusalem.
What is Palestinian?
An organization designed to eliminate all intraregional trade barriers and spur economic cooperation.
What is the Greater Arab Free Trade Area (GAFTA)?