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Deserts
A dry, often sandy region of little rainfall, extreme temperatures, and sparse vegetation
5,820 Questions
How do animals adapt to the Thar Desert?
In the Sahara, people adapted by their clothing, shelter, and activities. During the midday sun people generally stay sheltered and have an early afternoon rest or nap they don't sit around in the sun and if they go out in the day they cover up with loose clothes to keep themselves shaded cool. Their houses have been built to resist heat so it is cool inside, without air-conditioning. People of the deserts know where to find food and water, or how to go about acquiring it. They don't eat 3 big meals a day, they eat about 5 small meals. There are more people out and about in the evening, when it is cooler.
What is the average yearly rainfall of the Namib Desert?
The summer months are from October to April, the hottest being between November and February averaging 20 to 36 degrees celcius. During the winter months the temperature is generally between 18 and 22 degrees celcius, with the minimum range between 6 and 10 degrees celcius.
What enormous desert stretches across north Africa?
The largest desert in the world is not in Africa, it is in Antarctica. The Sahara is the largest desert in Africa, however.
What are some physical features in the Chihuahuan Desert?
There are many types of landforms in the Chihuahuan Desert. By and large they differ significantly from the types of landforms we associate with more mesic environments.
Two characteristic landform assemblages are the "Basin and Range" terrain, and the "Mesa and Scarp" terrain. Basins are usually wide- ranging, flat areas that lie between mountain ranges. They are made of material that has eroded from the surrounding mountain ranges. Basins may contain playas, playettes, sand sheets and hardpans of various types. Rocky basins may be described as hamadas made of exposed bedrock or of various desert pavements, or they may be merely flat and rocky in which case they are called regs.
Ranges erode to form plateaus, mesas, buttes, and pinnacles. The flat tops of these mountains are created by differential weathering down to resistant caprocks and/or hardpans. The escarpments are surrounded by taluses and various piedmont slope(bajada) type landforms, including alluvial fansalong with their associated remnants, collars, ballenas, coppice dunes, and terraces. Sometimes inselbergs arise from the basin floor.
Water-generated landforms include drainage channels which are usually described according to their size using landform-words like canyons, ravines, gullies, washes, drainages, or wadis. Great ergs (large areas covered with mobile sand dunes) are less frequent, but do exist, and dunes have an encyclopedic range of landform descriptions.
No discussion of Chihuahuan Desert landforms would be complete without including badlands. These complicatedly eroded areas are usually made mostly of massive deposits of various types of soft argillic materials (clays) or calcic materials. Badlands are created by the rapid erosion of these very soft materials. Badlands made of argillic materials usually have little or no vegetation because rapid shrinking and swelling of these materials disrupts roots of seedlings and prevents their establishment.
This is actually only a short list of typical desert landforms found in the Chihuahuan. Most of these landforms are themselves made of other features, which are described by separate groups of technical terms. A thorough answer to this question could form the basis of a nice book!
What is the wettest desert on the Earth?
The Sahara is the largest subtropical desert at 9,400,000 square kilometers or 3,320,000 square miles.
What kind of weather is in a cold desert?
That would depend upon which cold desert. The Antarctic Desert can drop to -130 degrees F in winter. The Gobi Desert has been known to drop to more than -40 degrees F in winter. Even the Great Basin Desert and the Colorado Plateau Desert have been known to drop well below zero F in winter.
What are the types of cold deserts?
Polar Deserts - Antarctica
Cold Winter Deserts - Gobi, Great Basin, Patagonian
Cool Coastal Deserts - Atacama, Namib
Which desert is closest to Dallas Texas?
Well I'm no expert on the subject, but I would say that the closest desert to Dallas is most likely in El Paso and surrounding areas. AKA - the Chihuahuan Desert.
How does Patagonia relate to South American deserts?
Sheep relate well to South American deserts. They are able to find enough food and water to survive in the harsh environment.
Patagonia is located at the southern end of South America which is shared by Argentina and Chile. This region contains the Andes mountains and Patagonia covers an area of approximately 1,000,000 square kilometers.
What are fertile areas in a desert with enough water to support trees and plants?
A small fertile area in a desert is called an oasis.
An oasis.
Which continent has the largest hot desert?
The continent that has the world's largest river is:
South America's Amazon River. This is due to the fact that it carries the most amount of water to the sea. The Amazon discharges over 7 million cubic feet per second of water. The Amazon River is approximately 4,000 miles.
The longest river in the world is the Nile River, located primarily in Africa. The Nile River is 4,132 miles long, though discharges 99,941 cubic feet per second of water.
The largest "hot" desert in the world is:
Northern Africa's Sahara Desert, which is 3.5 million square miles. In retrospect, that is a tad smaller the United States.
The worlds largest "normal" desert is actually Antarctica. Sense Antarctica is the world's driest place, it is considered a desert. Antarctica is approximately 5.5 million square miles.
What are desert houses made from?
The answer to this question has many parts. Houses in the desert vary greatly depending on which desert is being spoken of. For example, houses in Las Vegas are fully furnished and made from wood and various other construction materials. On the other hand houses in third world countries situated in the desert are most probably built from hardened mud, rocks may have been mixed in to give more support.
Do Joshua trees live in the Sonoran Desert?
Joshua trees would be found in a hot desert, such as the Mojave. Sage (Artemisia tridentata) would be in a cold winter desert such as the Colorado Plateau Desert and Great Basin Desert.
How much rain falls in a hot desert?
A desert, any desert, is defined as a region that receives less than 10 inches (250 mm) of precipitation per year.
What do you call people who live in the desert and move from place to place?
Yes there are groups of people who have been able to adapt to long term life in the desert. These groups would include (amongst others): Nomads or Bedouin traders of the Sahara, the Koi San of the Kalahari Desert as well as various groups of Aboriginal people living in the the Great Outback of Australia.
Another perspective:
The vast majority (millions) of people who live in deserts live in cities and towns. They have access to food and water, electricity, indoor plumbing, air conditioning, etc. - all things found in non-desert regions. People who live in deserts try to avoid being active outdoors during the hottest hours of the day during summer to prevent health issues caused by dehydration and over heating.
What is the average amount of rain in a desert?
A desert is defined as a region that receives less than 10 inches (250 mm) of rainfall per year on average. Some deserts receive virtually no rainfall for decades.
A desert is defined as a region that receives less than 10 inches (250 mm) of rainfall per year on average. Some deserts receive virtually no rainfall for decades.
What are deserts that start with the letter M?
There are very few deserts in the world that start with the letter 'c'. There is one that I found... it is in North America - The Colorado Desert.
Colorado Desert is a part of the larger Sonoran Desert, which extends across southwest North America. The Colorado Desert region encompasses, approximately 7 million acres (28,000 km2), reaching from the Mexican border in the south to the higher-elevation Mojave Desert in the north and from the Colorado River in the east to the Laguna Mountains of the Peninsular Ranges in the west. The area includes the heavily irrigated Coachella and Imperial Valleys. The Colorado Desert is home to many unique flora and fauna, many of which can be found no where else on the planet.
How do you find food or water in the desert?
If you are going into the desert for an extended period of time you need to plan ahead and take sufficient food and water with you. Unless you are an expert in identifying edible desert plants you would do best to avoid eating anything in the desert. There are many toxic plants, including some cacti.
The giant saguaro [Carnegiea gigantea] is a cactus that may reach an adult height of 40+ feet/12+ meters. The old man [Cephalocereus senilis] is another cactus that grows quite tall. It may reach an adult height of 50 feet/15 meters. Both also are among the longest lived cactus plants.
Why desert plants have thick fleshy stems?
Succulent plants have thick, fleshy stems and/or leaves. In the Americas that includes the cacti.
What are the names of all the deserts in the world?
There are deserts on every continent of the world. Even Europe has a few small patches of semiarid land. Most are located on the leeward side of mountain ranges. For a list of all the major deserts of the worls, see the link below.
