The Gambia is a very small and narrow African country with the border based on the Gambia River. The country is less than wide at its greatest width. The country's present boundaries were defined in 1889 after an agreement between the United Kingdom and France. It is often claimed by Gambians that the distance of the borders from the Gambia River corresponds to the area that British naval cannon of the time could reach from the river's channel. However, there is no historical evidence to support the story, and the border was actually delineated using careful surveying methods by the Franco-British boundary commission. The Gambia is almost an enclave of Senegal and is the smallest country on mainland Africa.
The grassy flood plain of the Gambia river contains Guinean mangroves near the coast, and becomes West Sudanian savanna upriver inland.
Location: Western Africa, bordering the North Atlantic Ocean and Senegal
Area: <br>total: 11,295 km<sup>2</sup> <br>land: 10,000 km<sup>2</sup> <br>water: 1,295 km<sup>2</sup>
Land boundaries: <br>total: 749 km <br>border countries: Senegal 749 km
Coastline: 80 km
Maritime claims:
Climate: tropical; hot, rainy season (June to November); cooler, dry season (November to May)
Terrain: floodplain of the Gambia River, flanked by low hills
Elevation extremes:
Natural resources: fish, clay, silica sand, titanium (rutile and ilmenite), tin, zircon
Land use: <br>arable land: 43.48% <br>permanent crops: 0.49% <br>other: 56.03% (2011)
Current issues: deforestation, desertification, prevalence of water-borne diseases, drought (rainfall has dropped by 30% in the last 30 years)
Environment - party to international agreements on:
This is a list of the extreme points of the Gambia, the points that are farther north, south, east or west than any other location.
Global Forest Watch publishes annual estimates of tree cover loss and 2000 tree cover extent derived from time-series analysis of Landsat satellite imagery in the Global Forest Change dataset. In this framework, tree cover refers to vegetation taller than 5 m (including natural forests and tree plantations), and tree cover loss is defined as the complete removal of tree cover canopy for a given year, regardless of cause.
For the Gambia, country statistics report cumulative tree cover loss of from 2001 to 2024 (about 16.1% of its 2000 tree cover area). For tree cover density greater than 30%, country statistics report a 2000 tree cover extent of . The charts and table below display this data. In simple terms, the annual loss number is the area where tree cover disappeared in that year, and the extent number shows what remains of the 2000 tree cover baseline after subtracting cumulative loss. Forest regrowth is not included in the dataset.