GEOGRAPHY, CLIMATE, ETC.GEOGRAPHY, CLIMATE, ETC.Sardinia is the largest island in the western Mediterranean, slightly smaller than Sicily but with a longer coastline. It is within easy sailing distance of Italy, both directly and across Corsica, and of North Africa and Southern France. Its coasts, especially in the east, are largely rugged and lacking in maritime approaches, but there are useable landings with access to the interior; and the west and south have numerous safe harbors, where Phoenician, Punic, and Roman cities were later to rise. Broadly speaking, three separate geological zones can be distinguished, an eastern and a western mountainous zone and a central zone that was originally submerged and was filled mostly with limestones, marls, and some sandstones; Ologocene and Pliocene-Pleistocene volcanoes are both attested in the central zone, the former contributing trachytes and trachytic tuffs, the latter, extensive basaltic plains. There are also some older and younger alluvial plains and Aeolian dunes in various regions. Although there are very few high mountains, Sardinia is in fact a mountainous region, characterized by much-eroded high plains and plateaux and by steep and abrupt slopes. About twenty percent of the island is comprised of low-lying plains with adjacent terraces to about 200 meters asl, the largest of which is the Campidano of Cagliari extending for some 110 km from the Gulf of Cagliari to the Gulf of Oristano. About two-thirds of the island's surface lies between the plains and associated terraces on the one hand and the 500 meter line on the other.
The coastal region of the southwest (Sulcis) and the southern 25 km of the Campidano are plagued by a semi-arid subtropical climate, with less than 500 mm of rainfall per year; to the interior of Sulcis and the Campidano and along the southern coast to the mouth of the Flumendosa as well as on the plain of Orosei runs a band of subtropical climate up to about 10 km wide, with 500 to 700 mm of rainfall per year. Except for two small, moist regions with more than 1100 mm of rainfall per year, much of the remainder of the island -- the western half, the north, and the eastern coastal area -- is temperate to warm, with 500 to 800 mm of rainfall per year and an average annual temperature of 15° to 16.9° C. The remainder is sub-humid, with average temperatures of 11° to 15° C. and 800 to 1200 mm of rainfall per year.
Rainfall in Sardinia is mostly associated with storms that arrive from the west around the end of autumn or early winter and again in late winter and early spring. Fewer than three percent of the rainy days in the year occur in July and August, and only about twenty percent from May to September, while about twenty-five percent occur during November and December and more than fifty percent between November and February. Rain tends to fall in cloudbursts, especially at the beginning of the fall rainy season; at some meteorological stations, a single storm brings half of the winter's and one-fifth of the year's rainfall. In consequence, Sardinia suffers from widespread aridity in the summer, especially in the south.
About sixty percent of the island's surface is covered with brown soils that generally have a high level of inherent fertility and support ample deciduous forest cover, ideally suited to pasturage or to supporting wildlife. Depending on slope and availability of water, some of these brown soils can be adapted to agriculture. There are other regions whose soils are suitable for forest and pasture, but most important for historical developments are the numerous regions whose soils are most able to support agriculture or horticulture. In addition to agricultural and pastoral potentiality, Sardinia was also fairly well endowed with mineral resources, especially copper, silver, lead, cassiterite and iron.
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