Editing Sahara desert (ecoregion) (section)

==Ecoregion delineation==
In 2001, WWF devised Terrestrial Ecoregions of the World (TEOW) "a biogeographic regionalization of the Earth's terrestrial biodiversity".<ref>"Terrestrial Ecoregions of the World". World Wildlife Fund. Accessed 25 April 2020. [https://www.worldwildlife.org/publications/terrestrial-ecoregions-of-the-world]</ref> The 2001 regionalization divided the deserts of the Sahara into several ecoregions. The Sahara desert ecoregion included the Sahara's hyper-arid center, and the more humid Saharan mountains and southern, northern, eastern, and western deserts were separate ecoregions.<ref name=WWF/><ref>Olson, D. M., Dinerstein, E., Wikramanayake, E. D., Burgess, N. D., Powell, G. V. N., Underwood, E. C., D'Amico, J. A., Itoua, I., Strand, H. E., Morrison, J. C., Loucks, C. J., Allnutt, T. F., Ricketts, T. H., Kura, Y., Lamoreux, J. F., Wettengel, W. W., Hedao, P., Kassem, K. R. 2001. Terrestrial ecoregions of the world: a new map of life on Earth. Bioscience 51(11):933-938.</ref>

In 2017, the authors of the 2001 system proposed a revised ecoregion system for the Sahara. Two new ecoregions, the [[West Sahara desert]] and [[East Sahara desert]], were designated in the hyper-arid center. The transitional [[North Saharan steppe and woodlands]] and South Saharan steppe and woodlands ecoregions were extended towards the central Sahara, and the South Saharan steppe and woodlands was renamed [[South Sahara desert]].<ref>Eric Dinerstein, David Olson, et al. (2017). An Ecoregion-Based Approach to Protecting Half the Terrestrial Realm, BioScience, Volume 67, Issue 6, June 2017, Pages 534–545, [https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/bix014]</ref>