Armenia

Armenia is an entirely mountainous country, a volcanic plateau folded between the Lesser Caucasus and the Anatolian highlands, with altitudes running from four hundred to four thousand metres. That compression of environments produces a diversity out of proportion to its size: oak and beech forests in the north, wormwood steppe and semi-desert in the Araxes valley, alpine meadows on the Aragats and Gegham volcanoes, and thorny scrub in the south. Lake Sevan, one of the largest high-altitude freshwater lakes in the world, fills a closed basin at almost two thousand metres and holds endemic fish. In the south, the forests of Shikahogh and the gorges of Syunik are the corridor by which the Persian leopard enters from Iran, and the crags support bezoar goats and Armenian mouflon.