A small peninsula in the Arabian Sea
The Qatari peninsula represents one of the outposts of the Arabian tectonic plate which is slowly sinking under the Eurasian plate. Geographically, it is located east of the Arabian Desert, plunging into the Persian Gulf. It borders Saudi Arabia to the south, where it is attached to the Arabian subcontinent, but faces on its northwestern shore Bahrain, located only 30 km from the Qatari coast. The country is also not far from the United Arab Emirates in the south along the coast. Without the white sand dunes of the southeast (around the inland sea of Khawr al Udayd), the rock formations of the west (Mount Dukhan) and the cliffs of the north (Fuwairit), the country would be flat.
Geological features that have made its wealth
The Qatari soil is mostly made up of limestone layers and dolomite, a harder rock. The soil is full of oil fields, but especially natural gas fields, its main wealth. It is indeed the1st world producer with the United States. Its main liquefied natural gas (LNG) production site is in Ras Laffan Industrial City, 80 kilometers from Doha, and Qatar Petroleum has announced a huge new project, the North Field East LNG Project. The LNG is extracted and transported by pipeline from the production fields and must undergo a series of processing steps before it can be used.
The country has other geological features, mainly around Zekreet, in the far west, near Dukhan. The erosion of the limestone in this place by wind and time creates real giant "mushrooms". A lunar landscape evolving over time, which has inspired film directors, especially where was built "Film City" a ghost town set that can be visited by 4x4. Not far away, Richard Serra has erected his monoliths aligned in the middle of the desert.
Coasts sculpted by inland seas
Very sinuous, the coasts are composed of an alternation of vast bays called "khor" in Arabic and lunar landscapes of eroded rocks ("ras" in Arabic) having formed in places small creeks. In the center of the peninsula, the sea has retreated from certain areas, leaving behind vast natural basins called "Riyadh". The most fertile are those of Al-Majidah, Al-Shahaniyah and Al-Sulimi. Arable land occupies only 1.64% of the total area, due to the extreme aridity of the land and climate. It is a flat desert country that receives barely 70 mm of rain per year.
The absence of relief is also found in the sea bed, shallow, unlike the Iranian coast. It is not uncommon to find huge reefs or sandbanks that extend for more than 50 km off the coast, which made it easier to practice pearl fishing on this coast than the other, because it was practiced in apnea at that time.
The sabkha: a unique lagoon system in the world
Due to the depressions created by the retreat of the sea in some parts of the peninsula, Qatar is surrounded by salt pans, the Sabkha. There grow only aquatic plants able to resist, in this particularly salty environment (mangrove, mangrove). It is mainly in the south, around the inland sea, that we find these shallow basins, surrounded by elevated lands. The sea enters during the high tides, then evaporates forming the salt marshes. The very high heat eventually dries out these areas, leaving the salt to settle on the rocks and impermeable sand.
The juxtaposition of vast shifting dunes that reach the coast, where they end up in the sea, and a large tidal bay, all in an arid tropical environment, has no known equivalent in the Middle East or even elsewhere in the world. The land portion includes perfect crescent dunes (barkhanes) and parabolic dunes, cliff-lined rowdat, deep valleys (wadis), plateaus (mesas), clay outcrops and karst forms, salt pans (sabkhat), and islands forming part of the bay itself. The development of these features is the result of ancient and contemporary geological and climatic processes. In the maritime part of Khor Al Udayd, represented by the passage from the narrow, deep channel to the vast shallow basin in the north, the landscape is of extraordinary natural beauty. There is no such extensive lagoon system in other Arabian Gulf countries.
The area is representative of outstanding examples of ongoing landform evolution. The "sabkha", a desert surface with a salty crust, which extends from Khor to Messaied, are different from the classical sabkhas, composed of calcium carbonate and derived from the sea. In Khor Al Udayd, the sabkhas were formed in an easterly direction by the prevailing north-northwest "shamal" winds, which blow the quartz-containing dune sand. Gradually the sand dunes cross this flat surface to the sea and thus continuously advance the sabkha towards the coast. As the amount of sand available is not infinite, it is foreseeable that eventually all the sand will have reached the sea and thus the formation of sabkha will stop. For this reason, the present phenomenon is of considerable importance. The pisolites found in the area - shells covered with calcium carbonate - are the only ones that exist in a quartz sand gangue. In addition, the hyper-saline groundwater in the landward parts of the sabkha contains very young dolomite crystals. Dolomite is common in ancient limestones, but this is one of the few places where it currently exhibits a subsurface precipitation phenomenon around the quartz sand. This makes it a unique location for field study of the chemical processes that make this mineral, which remains one of the last largely unsolved mysteries of modern geology. In addition, a large number of "salt mounds" have recently been discovered in this area. Each is covered with a crust of salt or gypsum, which could be the remnant of the surface of an ancient basin (sabkha) corresponding to an ancient sea level. If so, this would be a strong indication of sea level fluctuations during the post-Plistocene to late Holocene period. Raised beaches are also evidence of this phenomenon. Satellite images have recently shown that the lagoon at this location is gradually filling in
Currently, tidal currents keep it open near its entrance, but if further inland the shallow marine areas fill in, the currents will diminish and the rest of the inner part may fill in entirely. The study of satellite images in the vicinity of Umm Said (Messaieed) shows an area that may have been identical to Khor Al Udayd in the past. The latter constitutes an instructive outdoor study site on current geological and geomorphological processes, which indeed attracts national and international visitors, including both tourists and specialists
Doha, geographical epicenter
The impatient Doha, in Arabic ad-Dawa, "the big tree", seems to want to grow ever faster, to the point of confusing its destiny with that of the country itself. Qatar = Doha. With 2.38 million inhabitants, slightly more than Paris itself, Doha and its suburbs concentrate 80% of the country's population in an area of about 132 km2, compared to 105 km2 for Paris, which makes it a relatively dense city. Located in the center of the eastern coast of the peninsula, facing Iran, the capital itself (not counting the suburban cities) has only 650,000 inhabitants. Its historic coastline stretches for nearly 7 km, while the coastline stretches for 30 km to the artificial island of The Pearl to Lusail. A sprawling city, it develops according to its concentric "rings" named A, B, C, etc., some of which have since been partly erased from the map in the permanent redesign of the city. The D-Ring, for example, became the Doha ExpressWay between 2006 and 2010 and crosses the city on a north-south axis with 6 to 8 lanes, American style. Doha now extends from Al Wukra in the south (now served by a metro line) to Al Khor in the north and has swallowed the large city of Al Rayyan, which is now part of the easternmost suburb of Doha. It had 9 districts (neighborhoods) at the beginning of the 20th century, and now has 60! It is constantly under construction, for example the old central district of Msheireb, which was razed to the ground to be completely rebuilt. Not to mention the new districts for foreign "workers" where new constructions are lined up in the most remote suburbs of the city. Whatever the case, this immense construction site gives off an energy that never fails to amaze visitors!
Outside the capital, highways lead to the four corners of the island, in the south to Messaieed, where there are sand dunes and a vast inland sea. To the southwest, a highway leads to Salwa, Saudi Arabia, it is the main axis that serves the neighboring country. On the Qatari side, a large tourist complex has just been inaugurated here, with a vast Hilton hotel complex with real beaches and a water park for families. To the west, a highway serves Dukhan, to the north, another leads to Al Ruwais, where again a new tourist complex has been opened. It is close to the Unesco listed fort of Al Zubarah. The wild beaches on the northeast coast of the peninsula are nice weekend stops.
