Which desert lies between the Atlas Mountains and the Sahel in Morocco and Algeria?

The Sahara Desert lies between the Atlas Mountains and the Sahel across much of North Africa.

The Sahara is the world’s largest hot desert, extending across roughly 11 countries from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea. Its landscapes include sand seas, rocky plateaus, gravel plains, mountain ranges, and seasonal watercourses called wadis. Only a minority of the Sahara is covered by the towering dunes often shown in photographs.

The desert’s southern boundary grades into the Sahel, a semi-arid transition zone rather than a sharp line. Climate records and geological evidence show that the Sahara has shifted repeatedly over thousands of years. During wetter periods, lakes, grasslands, and human settlements occupied areas that are now intensely arid.

The Sahara is not a single uniform landscape. Rainfall, altitude, geology, and proximity to the Mediterranean or Atlantic create major regional differences, from coastal fog zones to extremely dry continental interiors.