Morocco's geography: the mountains that catch the Atlantic rain

How the Rif and the Atlas divide Morocco

Britannica describes the country in two parts, Atlantic Morocco and eastern Morocco, with two chains of mountains between them. The Rif forms a buffer along the Mediterranean coast and the Atlas a barrier across the centre. The halves connect through the Taza Gap, a narrow passage in the north-east, and along roads that follow older traditional routes. Both ranges rose in the Paleogene and Neogene periods, between about 65 and 2.6 million years ago, when sediment laid down in the Tethys Sea, which then bordered the northern coast of Africa, was folded and lifted. Most of Morocco lies high, at an average of about 800 m above sea level.

Geologically the Rif is one of the cordilleras that reach south from the Iberian Peninsula, from which Africa separated, in Britannica's account, only after the Neogene. Wikipedia's geography article ties it to the Sierra Nevada of Andalusia. The range curves in a crescent for about 250 km from Tangier in the west to Nador in the east and rises abruptly from a narrow coastal plain. Most of its limestone peaks pass 1,500 m, and Mount Tidirhine reaches 2,456 m.

The Atlas is three chains. The High Atlas runs 740 km. It begins as small hills at the edge of the Atlantic, climbs quickly past 2,000 m and reaches its summit at Jbel Toubkal, 4,165 m in Britannica, in Wikipedia and in this catalogue's record. The Middle Atlas branches north from it and reaches 3,340 m at its crest. The Anti-Atlas runs south-west from the High Atlas to the ocean, and the Sous valley lies between the two.

East of the ranges the land is lower and drier. The Moulouya River has worn out a semi-arid lowland, the Moulouya basin, and beyond it the High Plateaus stand at about 1,200 to 1,300 m, an extension of landforms in neighbouring Algeria. South and south-east of the Atlas the arid country forms the north-western limit of the Sahara, and a narrow transitional band at the foot of the mountains is called the pre-Sahara. In the far south-east, close to the Sahara, palm oases grow at Figuig and Zagora among other places.

Why the rain falls on the Atlantic side

Britannica names the factors that hold Morocco's rainfall down. The country lies on the southern margin of the belt of frontal storms that cross the North Atlantic, so rainfall is relatively low and decreases gradually from north to south. High-pressure ridges periodically develop offshore during the rainy season and shift the storms north, and drought follows when they persist for extended periods. The cold Canary Current along the western shore steadies the air and lowers the chance of rain further.

What rain arrives falls mostly between October and April, sometimes in downpours that cause destructive floods. On the coastal lowlands the annual total drops from about 800 mm on the northern Gharb plain to under 200 mm in the Sous valley. South of the Anti-Atlas the semi-arid country gives way quickly to desert.

How the mountains change the rainfall

Elevation changes that pattern sharply. The central Rif receives more than 2,030 mm a year, and the High Atlas, much farther south, about 760 mm. Snow is common at around 2,000 m, and on the highest ground the snowpack lingers into late spring or early summer. Wikipedia lists two ski stations, Mischliffen in the Middle Atlas and Oukaïmeden in the High Atlas.

The same ranges throw a rain shadow to the east, where desert conditions begin abruptly in the lee of the prevailing winds. The difference shows even along the Mediterranean side, where Wikipedia gives the west 600 to 1,500 mm a year and the east 300 to 700 mm. Its geography article divides the climate into two parts, a mild north-west where 95% of the population lives and an arid, poorly populated south-east.

Near the coast, cool onshore breezes hold average daily summer temperatures in the cities at 18 to 28 °C, and the sea keeps average daily winter temperatures at 8 to 17 °C. Inland, summer highs frequently pass 35 °C. In late spring or summer the chergui, a hot, dusty wind from the Sahara, can cross the mountains into the lowlands and reach the coastal cities. Temperatures under it rise sharply, often to 41 °C, and a crop still in the field can be badly damaged.

How Morocco's climate is changing

The World Bank's Climate Change Knowledge Portal gives Morocco a mean annual temperature of 18.53 °C and mean annual precipitation of 296.29 mm for 1995 to 2014. In the ERA5 reanalysis the portal cites, temperature has risen by 0.43 °C a decade since 1970 and precipitation has fallen by 13.19 mm a decade. For 2040 to 2059 under the high-emission SSP3-7.0 scenario, its median projection is 1.81 °C warmer and 42.62 mm drier than that baseline.

Where Morocco's rivers rise and where they end

The mountains that stop the rain also store it. Britannica describes them collecting rain and snow on their windward slopes and giving rise to numerous perennial watercourses, most of which drain west to the Atlantic.

The Sebou is some 450 km long, and with its tributaries it accounts for almost half of Morocco's surface water resources. The Oum Er-Rbia flows 555 km from the Middle Atlas to the Atlantic, and Rabat stands beside the Bou Regreg. The Moulouya runs the other way. It rises on the eastern slopes of the Middle Atlas and flows about 515 km to a mouth near the Algerian frontier, the one major Moroccan river to reach the Mediterranean.

The Draa forms in the High Atlas where the Dadès and the Imini meet and runs about 1,100 km, but all except its headstreams and upper course are usually dry. Relic populations of the West African crocodile persisted in it until the 20th century. Several minor streams leave the dry eastern slopes of the High Atlas for the Sahara, among them the Guir, the Rheris and the Ziz. Their volume is small, and they have cut deep gorges.

Since the 1930s the rivers have been dammed progressively for irrigation, hydroelectricity and flood control.

Why Morocco's reservoirs run low in dry years

In February 2024 Carnegie's Sada journal reported figures from Morocco's General Directorate of Water that put the average filling rate of dams across the country's nine basins at 23.17%. That was a drop of nearly 8%, or more than 1.3 billion m³ of water, against the same point a year earlier. The article describes the gap as one between north and south. Oum Er-Rbia stood at 8%, Souss Massa at 14% and Draa Oued Noun at 15%, while the Loukos held 56%, the Sebou 49% and the Tensift 40%.

The same report put rainfall over the preceding three months at 21 mm and average rainfall at its lowest since the 1970s. In December 2023 the Ministry of Interior wrote to governors and local authorities urging stringent measures to ration water. It restricted the watering of public parks and the cleaning of roads, and allowed public and private swimming pools to be filled once a year.

Between 1960 and 2020 renewable water per person fell from 2,560 m³ a year to about 620 m³, by Wikipedia's figures, and total renewable resources stood at 29 km³ in 2011. Irrigation uses more than 85% of the water Morocco mobilises, according to its country profile at the Convention on Biological Diversity, which also records salinisation on around 16% of irrigated land and a strategy to equip about 550,000 ha for drip irrigation.

Cereal yields still depend on how much rain falls in a given year, Wikipedia's article on the economy notes. Bank Al-Maghrib, in its board statement of 22 September 2026, took the Department of Agriculture's estimate of a 2026 cereal crop of 93 million quintals and assumed a return to average output of 50 million quintals in 2027.

What the Atlantic plains and their soils grow

The coastal plains of the centre and north are, in Wikipedia's words, the backbone of the country's agriculture. Britannica describes Atlantic Morocco as plains of fine sediment and plateaus of coarser deposits. In the north-west, between the Rif and a line running roughly from Rabat to Fès, the Sebou basin forms a large alluvial plain whose agricultural heart is the Gharb. South of that line, between the Atlas and the ocean, lie the high plains known together as the Moroccan Plateau: the Saïs near Fès and Meknès, the Tadla north-east of Marrakesh, the Haouz west of Marrakesh, and the broad Chaouïa, Doukkala and Abda plains south of Casablanca.

Britannica names the soils plain by plain. Tirs, a dark clay-marl on the Chaouïa, Doukkala and Abda plains, gives good yields of wheat and barley when rain is sufficient and holds enough moisture for summer pasture. Hamri, a light reddish siliceous soil across the Saïs, carries productive vineyards and good cereal crops but keeps little water. Dhess, a silt-rich alluvium, is the main soil of the Sebou basin and the foundation of much of Morocco's modern irrigated farming. Two others suit farming less: sandy rmel around the Mamora Forest and along the northern coast, and rocky haroucha in the semi-arid regions.

Wikipedia's geography article gives land use in 2011 as 17.5% arable, 2.9% permanent crops, 47.1% permanent pasture and 11.5% forest, and irrigated land in 2004 as 14,850 km².

The coast these plains run down to is regular, with few natural harbours. Before the modern ports were built, sandbars and rocky reefs offshore made the approach from the sea difficult. Casablanca, counted at 3,236,000 people in the 2024 census, is the main port.

Why the High Atlas still shakes

Where Morocco's earthquakes come from

Morocco lies south of the boundary between the African and Eurasian plates, which runs from the Azores to the Strait of Gibraltar as the Azores-Gibraltar transform fault and becomes collisional east of the strait, in the Alboran Sea. Most of the country's seismicity comes from movement on that boundary, and Wikipedia places the greatest hazard in the north, close to it. Wikipedia records a magnitude 6.3 earthquake in the coastal province of Al Hoceima in 2004 that left 628 people dead. The USGS lists shocks of magnitude 6.4 in the north in February 2004 and 6.3 in January 2016.

Western Morocco shakes less often. A magnitude 5.9 earthquake at Agadir on the Atlantic coast killed 12,000 to 15,000 people in 1960, and in USGS records for the region, which go back to 1900, no earthquake of magnitude 6 or larger had struck within 500 km of the High Atlas epicentre of 2023.

What the Al Haouz earthquake destroyed

At 11:11 pm local time on 8 September 2023 an earthquake struck beneath the High Atlas near Oukaïmeden and the town of Ighil, about 75 km south-west of Marrakesh. The USGS measured magnitude 6.8 at a depth of about 26 km. Wikipedia gives moment magnitude 6.9 at 19 km, and Morocco's own seismic agency reported 7.2 at 8 km. The USGS attributes the shock to oblique reverse faulting, possibly on the North Atlas fault along the front of the range. Satellite data analysed by Japan's Geospatial Information Authority showed about 20 cm of uplift around the epicentre.

By 14 September 2023 the national authorities counted 2,946 dead and 5,674 injured, as ECHO reported on ReliefWeb; Wikipedia's later total is at least 2,960 dead. The vast majority died in Al Haouz and Taroudant provinces, 1,684 and 980 by Wikipedia's figures. Tafeghaghte, Adassil, Imlil and the villages around Jbel Toubkal were destroyed or severely damaged, and Wikipedia counts 2,930 villages damaged in all. A year later, Reuters reported, 1,000 of the 55,000 new homes planned had been completed.

What lives in Morocco's forests and oases

Which trees grow on the mountains and plains

Outside the desert, Britannica compares Morocco's vegetation with that of the Iberian Peninsula. The more humid mountains still carry extensive forest, with cork oak, evergreen oak and deciduous oak on the lower slopes and fir and cedar higher up, particularly in the Middle Atlas. Wikipedia adds cloud forests in the west of the Rif and the Middle Atlas and a fir endemic to Morocco. East of Rabat lies the Mamora, a large cork oak forest, ringed since independence by government plantations of eucalyptus.

In the rugged highlands south of Essaouira grow open forests of argan, a tree Britannica calls unique to south-western Morocco. Its hard fruit yields a prized cooking oil, and UNESCO inscribed the practices and know-how concerning the argan tree on its Representative List of intangible cultural heritage in 2014.

Centuries of cutting, grazing and burning have left many lower slopes under maquis, a dense scrub of wild olive, mastic, kermes oak, arbutus, heather, myrtle and rosemary. Dwarf palm, jujube, esparto grass and Barbary fig cover large areas of the arid interior plains; the fig came from the Americas by way of Spain in the 16th century. East of the mountains there is little natural vegetation, but the date palm, brought to Morocco at a very early period, is grown widely in the oases. The country's profile at the Convention on Biological Diversity describes a project to plant one million date palms in the oases of the Tafilalet up to 2015, meant to lift date production from 26,000 t in 2010 to 95,000 t in 2030.

The same profile gives forest loss as an average of 31,000 ha a year and says almost all forests are overgrazed. Global Forest Watch, as Wikipedia cites it, puts tree cover loss at 60,012 ha from 2001 to 2024, about 9.3% of the tree cover of 2000.

Which animals still live in Morocco

Large game has been disappearing since Roman times, when lions and elephants were still abundant, and both are long gone. The last wild Barbary lion, now a national emblem, was shot in the Atlas Mountains in 1922. Gazelles are still seen occasionally in the south, and mouflons and fennecs in the Atlas. The two encyclopaedias disagree on the Barbary macaque. Britannica says it flourishes under government protection in the forests of the Middle Atlas; Wikipedia says it faces extinction from trade, urbanisation and the clearing of its forest habitat. Britannica singles out the bird life, including the storks that nest on city ramparts and mosque rooftops, and Wikipedia counts 454 bird species.

Protected Planet listed 92 protected areas in October 2026, among them 11 national parks, 34 Ramsar wetlands and 4 biosphere reserves. They covered 2.14% of the land and 0.27% of the marine and coastal area.

Where Moroccans live between the mountains and the sea

Wikipedia places most of the population north of the mountains. The census of 2024 counted 36,828,330 people on 1 September 2024 in twelve regions. The Haut-Commissariat au Plan (HCP), which ran it, found 71.2% of them in five: Casablanca-Settat, Rabat-Salé-Kénitra, Marrakesh-Safi, Fès-Meknès and Tanger-Tétouan-Al Hoceima.

Since 1960 most of the growth has gone to the towns. In the HCP's census series the urban share was 29.2% in 1960 and 62.8% in 2024, and over that span the urban population went from about 3.4 million to 23.1 million while the rural population went from 8.2 million to 13.7 million. Seven cities held 37.8% of the urban population in 2024, from Casablanca at 3,236,000 to Rabat, the capital, at 516,000.

The last three regions in the table take in part or all of Western Sahara, and the HCP counts their residents in the national total.

The mountains keep populations of their own. Britannica calls them long areas of refuge where Imazighen have preserved their language and culture, and it divides Tamazight speakers into groups by range: the Rif people of the Rif Mountains, the people of the Middle Atlas, and the people of the High Atlas and the Sous valley.

Where Morocco's borders and coasts end

Morocco has coasts on two seas. Its Atlantic coast reaches past the Strait of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean, and Wikipedia's geography article gives the whole coastline as 1,835 km. At the strait, 13 km of water separate Morocco from Spain.

The same article gives 2,018.9 km of land border: 1,559 km with Algeria, 444 km with Western Sahara, and 6.3 km and 9.6 km with Ceuta and Melilla, two Spanish enclaves on the Mediterranean coast. The Algerian border has been closed since 1994. Spain also holds Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera, Peñón de Alhucemas and the Chafarinas islands along that coast. Morocco claims Ceuta, Melilla and Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera together with several of the small islands, and a dispute with Spain over the islet of Perejil in 2002 drew attention to the sovereignty of Ceuta and Melilla.

Wikipedia's geography article gives Morocco no southernmost point, because the southern border with Western Sahara follows latitude 27°40′ north. The westernmost point is where that border meets the Atlantic.

This catalogue's record gives Morocco an area of 446,550 km², the figure Wikipedia's geography article also gives, and Britannica measures Western Sahara separately at 252,120 km². The lowest point, Sebkha Tah, lies 55 m below sea level.

The status of Western Sahara is disputed. Morocco claims the territory as its Southern Provinces, and the Polisario Front claims it for the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, which it declared as a government-in-exile in 1976. Morocco: history follows how Morocco pressed its claim, and Western Sahara: history the territory's own record. This catalogue records the dispute and takes no position on it.