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Four surprising facts about UAE habitats: a talk by Dr. Gary Brown

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Dr. Gary Brown recently visited Abu Dhabi to give us a bird’s-eye view of the UAE’s habitats, from coastal sands to mountain wadis, sabhka salt flats to desert dunes. Gary literally wrote the book on habitats in the UAE, with his 2004 publication of ‘Interpretation Manual of the Major Terrestrial Natural and Semi-Natural Habitat Types of the Abu Dhabi Emirate,’ the product of intense fieldwork with Benno Böer to map out the identity and distribution of habitats as a tool for conservation planning. sabkha and megadunes They based their classification of habitats on three factors: basic vegetation type, geomorphology, and soil type. Each has a distinct array of flora and fauna that thrive there, and Gary has an enviable assortment of photos to prove it, some of which we are proud to use here. sabkha: seems lifeless, but look closer   He stressed the need for fieldwork, as opposed to remote data collection, since so many of the UAE’s habitats can look ‘dead’ to the