What is a desert?

The desert is a land of extremes: extreme

heat and extreme dryness; sudden flash
floods and cold nights. Because deserts
are such a difficult places to live in they
often have names likes "Death Valley,"
"the empty quarter," and "the place from
where there is no return."

How dry is a desert?

Deserts are usually very, very dry.
Even the wettest deserts get less than
ten inches of rain a year.
In most places, rain falls steadily
throughout the year. But in the desert,
there may be only a few periods of
rains per year with a lot of time
between rains. When it does rain, there
may be quite a downpour! After the
rain, desert flower bloom

Is it always hot in a desert?

Everyone knows that during the day many
deserts are hot, very hot. Temperatures
can get as high as 100 degrees fahrenheit
are not uncommon. Yet at night, the same
deserts can have temperatures fall into the
40s or 50s? With no clouds or plant life to
keep the heat in, it begins to cool as soon
as the sun goes down.

Types of desert
Believe it or not, deserts come in two varieties: hot
and cold.
The Antarctic is actually the Earths largest
desert. The main form of precipitation in a
cold desert is snow -- but only ten inches or
less per year.
The Sahara is the largest hot
desert. These are covered in sand
and rock.

Can any plants grow in a desert?

Deserts are the home to many living
things.
Plants that grow in a desert have to be
especially adapted to the dry
conditions. They must be able to:
collect and store water and reduce
water loss.
Desert plants look quite different to
plant that grow in other places.

Which animals live in the desert?

Animals in the desert must survive the intense
heat, searing sun, and lack of water. Animals
that live in the hot desert have many
adaptations. Some animals never drink, but get
their water from seeds (some can contain up to
50% water) and plants. Many animals are
nocturnal, sleeping during the hot day and only
coming out at night to eat and hunt. Some
animals rarely spend any time above ground.

Some of the animals that live in the

desert.
A sidewinder is a small agile snake. It is
mainly nocturnal and takes shelters from
the heat of the day in the burrow of
another animal or under a bush.

The fat sand rat overcomes the problem of the

unpredictability of desert food supplies by laying
down a thick layer of fat all over its body when
there is plenty of food It then lives off this fat when
food is short. Active day and night, this gerbil darts
about collecting seeds which it carries back to its
burrow.

Subtropical Deserts
Subtropical deserts the hottest deserts. They are found in Asia,
Australia, Africa and North and South America. In the United
States, the Chihuahuan, Sonoran and Mojave are all subtropical
deserts. Subtropical deserts are very hot and dry in the summer and
cooler but still dry in the winter. Rainfall happens in short bursts.
The air is so hot and dry in these deserts that sometimes rain
evaporates before it even has a chance to hit the ground! The soil in
subtropical deserts is usually either sandy or coarse and rocky.
Plants and animals in subtropical deserts must be able to withstand
the hot temperatures and lack of moisture. Shrubs and small trees in
the subtropical desert usually have leaves adapted to retain moisture.
Animals in subtropical deserts are usually active at night, when it is
cooler.

Coastal Deserts
Coastal deserts occur in cool to warm areas along the coast. They
have cool winters and long, warm summers. Coastal deserts are
located on the west coasts of continents between 20 to 30
latitude. Winds off the coast blows in an easterly pattern and
prevents the moisture from moving onto the land. The Namib
Desert in Africa and the Atacama Desert in Chile are coastal
deserts.

Cold Winter Deserts

Cold winter deserts are also known as semi-arid deserts. They
have long, dry summers and cold winters with low rain or
snowfall. In the United States, the Great Basin, the Colorado
Plateau and the Red Desert are all cold winter deserts. Other
cold winter deserts include the Gobi desert in China and Mongolia
and the Patagonian desert in Argentina. The lack of rainfall in
cold winter deserts is often caused by the rainshadow effect. The
rainshadow effect happens when a high mountain range stops
moisture from reaching an area. The Himalayan Mountains prevent
rainfall from reaching the Gobi Desert.

Polar deserts

Polar deserts are areas with annual precipitation less than 250 millimeters and a mean temperature during the warmest
month of less than 10 C. Polar deserts on the Earth cover nearly 5 million square kilometers and are mostly bedrock or
gravel plains. Sand dunes are not prominent features in these deserts, but snow dunes occur commonly in areas where
precipitation is locally more abundant. Temperature changes in polar deserts frequently cross the freezing point of water.
This "freeze-thaw" alternation forms patterned textures on the ground, as much as 5 meters in diameter.

The Dry Valleys of Antarctica have been

ice-free for thousands of years (courtesy of
USGS Image Processing Facility. Flagstaff.
Arizona).

Monsoon deserts

"Monsoon," derived from an Arabic word for "season," refers to a wind

system with pronounced seasonal reversal. Monsoons develop in response
to temperature variations between continents and oceans. The southeast
trade winds of the Indian Ocean, for example, provide heavy summer
rains in India as they move onshore. As the monsoon crosses India, it
loses moisture on the eastern slopes of the Aravalli Range. The Rajasthan
Desert of India and the Thar Desert of Pakistan are parts of a monsoon
desert region west of the ranqe.

The Indus River floodplain, lower left, is the

western border of the Thar Desert. This Landsat
image of the monsoon desert shows small
patches of sand sheets in the upper right, with
three types of dunes; some dunes are almost 3
kilometers long.

Midlatitude deserts
Midlatitude deserts occur
between 30 and 50 N. and S.,
pole ward of the subtropical
high-pressure zones. These
deserts are in interior drainage
basins far from oceans and
have a wide range of annual
temperatures. The Sonoran
Desert of south-western North
America is a typical
midlatitude desert.

A rare rain in the Tengger, a

midlatitude desert of China,
exposes ripples and a small
blowout on the left. Winds
will shortly cover or remove
these features.

Rain shadow deserts

Rain shadow deserts are formed because

tall mountain ranges prevent moisture-rich
clouds from reaching areas on the lee, or
protected side, of the range. As air rises
over the mountain, water is precipitated
and the air loses its moisture content. A
desert is formed in the leeside "shadow" of
the range.

This Landsat image shows the

Turpan Depression in the rain
shadow desert of the Tian Shan of
China. A sand sea is in the lower
center on the right, but desert
pavement, gray in color, dominates
this desert. The few oases in the
desert and the vegetation in the
mountains at the top are in red. A
blanket of snow separates the
vegetation in the Tian Shan from the
rain shadow desert.

Trade wind deserts

The trade winds in two belts on the equatorial sides of

the Horse Latitudes heat up as they move toward the
Equator. These dry winds dissipate cloud cover, allowing
more sunlight to heat the land. Most of the major
deserts of the world lie in areas crossed by the trade
winds. The world's largest desert, the Sahara of North
Africa, which has experienced temperatures as high as
57 C, is a trade wind desert.

The Sahara of Africa is the

world's largest desert. It
contains complex linear
dunes that are separated by
almost 6 kilometers.

Extra-terrestrial deserts

Mars is the only other planet on which we have identified

wind-shaped (eolian) features. Although its surface
atmospheric pressure is only about one-hundredth that of
Earth, global circulation patterns on Mars have formed a
circumpolar sand sea of more than five million square
kilometers, an area greater than the Empty Quarter of Saudi
Arabia, the largest sand sea on our planet. Martian sand seas
consist predominantly of crescent-shaped dunes on plains near
the perennial ice cap of the north polar area. Smaller dune
fields occupy the floors of many large craters in the polar
regions.

This Viking spacecraft image of Mars shows

alternating layers of ice and windblown dust
near the north polar cap. Annual and other
periodic climatic changes due to orbit
fluctuations may occur on Mars (courtesy of
USGS Image Processing Facility, Flagstaff,
Arizona).

Done By: K.Maheshwari

7th B