The ecoregion covers an area of 48,400 square kilometers (18,700 sq mi), about 75%, of the island of Sri Lanka, with the exception of the islands' southwestern corner and Central Highlands, home to the Sri Lanka lowland rain forests and Sri Lanka montane rain forests ecoregions, respectively, and the northern Jaffna Peninsula, which is part of the Deccan thorn scrub forests ecoregion.

The highest of these inselbergs is Ritigala (766 meters), which lies north of the Central Highlands.

Most rain falls during the December-to-March northeast monsoon season, and it is mostly dry the rest of the year.

The Sri Lanka dry-zone dry evergreen forests are made up mostly of evergreen trees, which distinguish them from the deciduous trees that characterize most other tropical dry broadleaf forest ecoregions.

The dry-zone dry evergreen forests are home to most of the Sri Lanka's 6000 Sri Lankan elephants (Elephas maximus maximus), the island's indigenous subspecies of Asian elephant.