What ecosystems does spain have?

Question

eg rainforest desserts

Answer 1

As spanish, i must disagree with the answer above.

most of peninsular Spain has CONTINENTAL weather, not mediterranean which appears only on mediterranean coast.

continental weather means extreme temperatures, very cold in winter and very hot in summer. Winter is cold dry and it usually snows about 800mts. of altitude.

summer is very  hot, can be around 30-35 ºC.

North and Northwest of spain has OCEANIC weather, the same as Portugal has, due to the atlantic ocean. Winter are wetter than continental areas, windy and not so much cold. Summer is not so hot because of the wind coming from the sea.

Canary island has something like tropical weather, it is near Africa.

Desserts appear in South spain (Almeria).

Answer 2

Spain has a range of ecosystems, especially if the Canary Islands are included. Peninsular Spain mostly has a mediterranean climate (think California) with warm and usually wet winters and long, sunny and dry summers along the coasts. The rain in Spain does not fall mostly on the plain, it falls in the mountains, but it does mostly fall in winter.

Much of Spain, including Madrid, is on a high interior plateau, the meseta, where the weather can be harsh because of the altitude. Cold and windy in winter and very hot and dry in summer. That area is savanna or grassland in the main with few trees. The further south,the hotter and drier in the summer.

Because of mountains, the pattern is complicated. NW Spain, Galicia, is much wetter than the rest of the country (Espana verde, green Spain), the rain caused by mountains a ways inland from the coast. The Pyrenees, the Picos de Europa, and in the South the Sierra Nevada reach substantial altitudes and have montane ecosystems.

Finlly, the Canaries, much further south, has subtropical climates made very complicated by mountains and by proximity to the Saharan region of Africa.

There are no rainforests, and true desert is limited to small parts of the Mediterranean coast and the Canaries. Mustly arid to semi-arid conditions prevail.