Geography of Tanzania

thumb|right|300px|Map of Tanzania

thumb|300px|Location of Tanzania

thumb|300px|Topographic map of Tanzania

thumb|336px|Köppen climate classification map of Tanzania

Tanzania comprises many lakes, national parks, and Africa's highest point, Mount Kilimanjaro (). Northeast Tanzania is mountainous, while the central area is part of a large plateau covered in grasslands. The country also contains the southern portion of Lake Victoria on its northern border with Uganda and Kenya.

Administratively, Tanzania is divided into 31 regions, with twenty-five on the mainland, three on Unguja (known informally as Zanzibar Island), and two on Pemba Island.

Statistics

thumb|right|300px|Road map of Tanzania

Location: Eastern Africa, bordering the Indian Ocean, between Kenya and Mozambique.

Geographic coordinates:

Continent: Africa

Area:

<br />note: includes the islands of Mafia, Pemba, and Unguja

total:
land:
water:

; Area comparative

:* Australia comparative: slightly smaller than South Australia

:* Canada comparative: approximately the size of British Columbia

:* United States comparative: approximately three times the size of New Mexico

:* EU comparative: slightly more than three times the size of Poland

Land boundaries: the world's only active volcano to produce natrocarbonatite lava. To the west of the Crater Highlands lies Serengeti National Park, which is famous for its lions, leopards, elephants, rhinoceroses, and buffalo plus the annual migration of millions of white bearded wildebeest. Just to the southeast of the park is Olduvai Gorge, where many of the oldest hominid fossils and artifacts have been found.

Further northwest is Lake Victoria on the Kenya–Uganda–Tanzania border. This is the largest lake in Africa by surface area and is traditionally named as the source of the Nile River. Southwest of this, separating Tanzania from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is Lake Tanganyika. This lake is estimated to be the second deepest lake in the world after Lake Baikal in Siberia. The western portion of the country between Lakes Victoria, Tanganyika, and Malawi consists of flat land that has been categorised by the World Wildlife Fund as part of the Central Zambezian miombo woodlands ecoregion. Just upstream from the Kalambo Falls, there is one of the most important archaeological sites in Africa. Tanzania's Southern Highlands are in the southwestern part of the country, around the northern end of Lake Malawi. Mbeya is the largest city in the Southern Highlands.

The centre of Tanzania is a large plateau, which is part of the East African Plateau. The southern half of this plateau is grassland within the Eastern miombo woodlands ecoregion, the majority of which is covered by the huge Selous National Park. Further north the plateau is arable land and includes the national capital, Dodoma.

The eastern coast contains Tanzania's largest city and former capital, Dar es Salaam. Just north of this city lies the Zanzibar Archipelago, a semi-autonomous territory of Tanzania which is famous for its spices. The coast is home to areas of East African mangroves, mangrove swamps that are an important habitat for wildlife on land and in the water. A recent global remote sensing analysis suggested that there were 1,256km² of tidal flats in Tanzania, making it the 26th ranked country in terms of tidal flat area.

Watersheds

Eastern and central Tanzania are drained by rivers that empty into the Indian Ocean. The major rivers are, from north to south, the Pangani, Wami, Ruvu, Rufiji, Matandu, Mbwemkuru, and the Ruvuma River, which forms the southern border with Mozambique.

Most of Northern Tanzania drains into Lake Victoria, which empties into the Nile River.

The western portion of Tanzania is in the watershed of Lake Tanganyika, which drains into the Congo River. The Malagarasi River is the largest tributary of Lake Tanganyika.

Part of southwestern Tanzania drains into Lake Malawi, which empties south into the Zambezi River.

The Southern Eastern Rift area of north-central Tanzania is made up of several endorheic basins, which have no outlet to the sea and drain into salt and/or alkaline lakes. Lake Rukwa in west-central Tanzania, is another endorheic basin.

Climate

Tanzania has a mainly tropical climate but has regional variations due to topography. In the highlands, temperatures range between during cold and hot seasons respectively and a subtropical highland climate is found. The rest of the country has temperatures rarely falling lower than . The hottest period extends between November and February () while the coldest period occurs between May and August ().

Seasonal rainfall is driven mainly by the migration of the Intertropical Convergence Zone. It migrates southwards through Tanzania in October to December, reaching the south of the country in January and February, and returning northwards in March, April, and May. This causes the north and east of Tanzania to experience two distinct wet periods – the short rains (or "Vuli") in October to December and the long rains (or "Masika") from March to May – while the southern, western, and central parts of the country experience one wet season that continues October through to April or May.

Examples

Forests

Tree cover extent and loss

Global Forest Watch publishes annual estimates of tree cover loss and 2000 tree cover extent derived from time-series analysis of Landsat satellite imagery in the Global Forest Change dataset. In this framework, tree cover refers to vegetation taller than 5 m (including natural forests and tree plantations), and tree cover loss is defined as the complete removal of tree cover canopy for a given year, regardless of cause.

For Tanzania, country statistics report cumulative tree cover loss of from 2001 to 2024 (about 13.2% of its 2000 tree cover area).

The first assessed FREL, submitted in 2017 and technically assessed in 2018, covered the REDD+ activity "reducing emissions from deforestation". Although presented as national, it was constructed as the sum of subnational FRELs for mainland Tanzania and Zanzibar. Using a 2002-2013 reference period for mainland Tanzania and a 2004-2012 reference period for Zanzibar, the modified and assessed national FREL was 43,736,974 t CO2 eq per year, revised from 58,462,472.67 t CO2 eq per year in the original submission.

The technical assessment states that the benchmark represented the annual average of CO2 emissions from gross deforestation, defined as the change from forest to non-forest cover. It included above-ground biomass, below-ground biomass and deadwood, reported CO2 only, and used a forest definition of at least 0.5 hectares, minimum tree crown cover of 10 percent, and trees capable of reaching at least 3 metres in height at maturity; activity data came from land-use and land-cover change analysis and emission factors from the national forest inventory.