the desert

Introduction of the desert

2011-08-15T15:04:00.000+01:00

The Desert

" The Desert " When we say the word the desert they lead us to the introduction of the desert in all its aspects.
the desert are mainly found around the tropic of Cancer and tropic of Capricorn in Northern and Southern Hemispheres respectively. The common definition of the desert is a region that receives less than 25cm of rain a year on average.
When people think of the desert, the following image comes to their minds : hot and arid land, vast expanses of sand, soil of reddish brown color, a sky of brilliant blue, no or very few plants, cacti, spiny leaves and camel is the only animal that they can think of.

The truth is not like that. It is not very common to find sand in the desert, but small rocks, pebbles and loose gravel on the surface layer instead. Only 15% of the world' s the desert surface is pure sand. (Parts of the desert and Arabia sahara).
The Desert occupies about one fifth to one third of the earth' s surface. The rainfall pattern is not a seasonal one. Instead, rain usually falls in the form of sudden, violent thunderstorms. There may be several storms in a year or none for several years. The " average rainfall each year" is not calculated based on one year' s rainfall, but on the total rainfall in a long period of time.
In the Western imagination the word “the desert” most often evokes a landscape of endless gigantic sand dunes, dazzling white under a cloudless hot-blue sky and a blazing sun.
This landscape of the imagination is likely to be empty—deserted—except, perhaps, for a caravan of nomads and camels that inches slowly across the horizon, or a lone man stumbling, sun-blackened and sun-parched, through the heat haze. Or there may even be an emerald-green oasis, where tents are set out in the shade of a palm grove—though this, of course, may be nothing but a tantalizing mirage. This is the magnificent and exotic landscape of movies such as David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Sheltering Sky (1990), and of countless adventure stories of intrepid travelers and explorers.
This idealized or classic landscape is not pure fantasy: parts of the Sahara, Arabian, and other the deserts fit quite well with this image—though perhaps with less Technicolor vibrancy. The stereotype does, however, contain some misleading notions, of which the most notable is that all the deserts are hot, and that heat is crucial in defining what constitutes a desert. Temperature actually plays a secondary role or no role in such definitions—not all the desert are hot, and even so-called hot deserts are not hot all the time.

The Gobi Desert deep within Central and East Asia, for example, has relatively cool but erratic temperatures even in summer and can be brutally cold in winter, and in the Sahara temperatures can easily plummet to 4°C (39°F) at night. Modern geographers also recognize the category of the polar the desert, applying it to all of Antarctica and parts of the Arctic (notably Greenland), where temperatures day and night stand at the opposite extreme to those of daytime hot deserts.

Even a brief perusal of the photographs included in this site will suggest a much more varied, and even nebulous, notion of what is—or is sometimes—meant by the term “the desert” There are vast gravel plains, gleaming expanses of sun-baked salt, and rugged, eroded landscapes of pinnacles, canyons, and rock arches. There are deserts smothered with flowers and blooming cacti; there are others studded with oil wells or scarred by quarries. Some are washed by the ocean and bathed in fog, and some are ice-encrusted polar wildernesses. One of the surprising facts encountered in this site is that only 20 to 30 percent of the world’s deserts are covered by sand, and that the world’s great deserts in fact encompass a huge variety of terrains, not only relative to each other but sometimes within their own boundaries. There is, moreover, little exotic about the desert biome— almost 20 percent of the earth’s land surface is desert, and there are deserts in almost every continent and at every latitude. Of the continents only Europe has no the desert area.
For many peoples of the world the desert is not a remote fantasy but a reality that impinges on their everyday lives.

pictures of the desert

Limestone columns rise from the Pinnacle Desert in Western Australia.
The hardened columns, which have been exposed by weathering
in this coastal region, range from only a few centimeters to 5
meters (16 ft.) in height.

Conventional wisdom depicts the desert as almost devoid of vegetation or wildlife, save perhaps for a sidewinding snake or rearing scorpion. It is seen as abandoned by human beings, who in this hostile environment are thought of as interlopers or aliens, there only because they are on their way to somewhere else or because they have fatally lost their way.

this is animals of the desert [ scorpion animal desert ]

In our articles next we shall see how many deserts, despite their dearth of water—the precondition for the survival of life—in fact provide a remarkably fertile habitat for plants, animals, and humans alike, each of which have found ingenious ways of making the best of the desert. Plants store water through months of drought or blossom and seed after rare rainfall in a matter of days, transforming bare landscape into dazzling fields of color. Animals live by night or burrow deep underground, or—as in the case of reptiles—are physiologically adapted to withstand the desert’s temperature extremes.
Humans living in and on the fringes of deserts have developed unique lifestyles that usually feature nomadism—a fluid way of life that is able to adapt swiftly and creatively to the vicissitudes of this harsh environment. Some of the world’s earliest civilizations— including those of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia—formed on the margins of great deserts, where the strenuousness of life called for the utmost in human endeavor.

this is animals in the desert [ Chameleon animal desert ]

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what is a desert

2011-06-30T17:19:00.000+01:00

what is a desert

When we ask what is a desert ? This question leads us to the definition of the desert , So answer of the question "what is a desert " is a definitions of the desert .

Definitions of the term “desert” are neither static nor absolute. All over the world the term “desert” and its foreign-language equivalents are culturally and topographically specific. European words such as “desert,”“desert” and “Wüste” emphasize the sense of abandonment that is the standard Western response to the desert landscape—an idea that is also reflected in the etymology of the name of the Namib Desert in southern Africa— “the place where there is nothing.” Arabic has not one but several words for “desert,” including erg (applied to large areas of sand or “sand seas”) and hammada (applied to stony plains), as well as the more general sahra, from whose plural form—sahara—the world’s largest desert takes its name.

The Turkic kum means literally “sand,” reflecting the sandy wastes of Central Asia—hence the Kara-Kum, or “Black Sand,” of Turkmenistan and the Kyzyl-Kum, or “Red Sand,” of neighboring Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan—while the Persian dasht means “plain” as well as “desert,” in reference to the plateau deserts that dominate central Iran .

Physical geographers and geologists must at least attempt to be more scientific in their definitions of what constitutes a desert, and they have debated and extended the possible meanings. Today they agree that the key determining factor is aridity, or the lack of plentiful and consistent rainfall—generally defined as less than 250 millimeters (10 in.) of annual precipitation. Such a definition extends the meaning of the desert well beyond its traditional confinement to the hot deserts that have so exercised the European imagination . low rainfall is a characteristic not only of the subtropical regions where most of the hot deserts—the Sahara, Arabian, and Australian deserts, for example—are located, but also of continental interiors, the western sides of continents, the leeward side of high mountain ranges, and parts of the Arctic and Antarctic regions.

A map showing the desert regions in the world

Overleaf Map showing the world’s desert zones—yellow areas indicate
regions with hyperarid or arid levels of precipitation.

Even this definition is by no means watertight; strict definitions always create seeming anomalies. The Kalahari in southern Africa is labeled a desert in every atlas, and its very name—meaning “the Great Thirst”—would appear to confirm this status. But most of the Kalahari receives roughly twice the amount of the annual maximum allowable precipitation and has a relatively rich vegetation, and therefore for some scholars this would-be desert falls outside the strict definition of the term. However, more complex definitions of aridity take into account the rate of evaporation as well as the amount of precipitation, and the Kalahari, despite its rainfall, has little standing water due to the dry heat that rapidly evaporates much of the land’s moisture. In their pursuit of exact definitions, experts have sometimes devised formulas to indicate a particular region’s “Index of Aridity.” One of the simplest, the Lang Rain Factor, for example, divides the annual precipitation (in millimeters) by the mean annual temperature (in centigrade). Other arid regions, while not generally called deserts and often receiving slightly more than the regulation 250 millimeters (10 in.) of rainfall, display some of the characteristics of the deserts.

Such borderline “semiarid” regions are often covered by the terms “semidesert” or “drylands.” The Sahel in sub-Saharan Africa is one important area of semidesert. In recent years this vast region has come under close scrutiny as its poor but locally crucial arable and pastoral lands have become degraded and the Sahara Desert has crept southward.

Surprisingly perhaps, water plays a key role in shaping the desert terrain. This is because, when water does finally make its appearance in the desert, it usually does so in torrential form—powerful, destructive floods that rip through the land, sweeping away any debris or loose vegetation and over the centuries cutting channels—called “wadis” in North Africa and Arabia and “arroyos” in the Americas—deep into the landscape. Despite appearances, deserts are often mobile, changing landscapes, uniquely vulnerable to the often dramatic metamorphoses worked by weathering agents such as water, heat, and wind. Sand dunes slowly shift and grow; glistening salt pans become lakes and then dry hard again within weeks or days; and over millennia rocks are scoured and eroded into dramatic or bizarre forms, such as flat-topped mesas, mushroom-shaped zeugens, and awe-inspiring rock arches.

pictures of the desert in California
A dry delta curls through eroded hills in California’s Death Valley, in the
rain-shadow of the Sierra Nevada, marking where a river ends in
achannel of sediment

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pictures of the desert

2011-06-29T15:24:00.000+01:00

pictures of the desert

this pictures of the desert is a most beautiful photos of the deserts.

For more pictures of the desert Download this file , This file contains 200 images of the most beautiful pictures of deserts.

This photos of the deserts is a file of type RAR .

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the desert what is a desert pictures of the desert video of the desert Home

For more images of the desert Download this file , This file contains 200 images of the most beautiful deserts.
This photos of deserts is a file of type RAR .
Download
Any requests or inquiries commented below.

For more images of the deserts Download this file , This file contains 200 images of the most beautiful desert.
This photos of deserts is a file of type RAR .
Download
Any requests or inquiries commented below.

the desert what is a desert pictures of the desert video of the desert in the desert

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In the desert

2011-06-28T00:32:00.000+01:00

IN THE DESERT

In the desert many kinds of the life although it is difficult to live in the desert for lack of the presence of water in the desert and the climate is very hot .
Conventional wisdom depicts the desert as almost devoid of vegetation or wildlife, save perhaps for a sidewinding snake or rearing scorpion. It is seen as abandoned by human beings.

pictures lake in the desert

in fact provide a remarkably fertile habitat for plants, animals, and humans alike, each of which have found ingenious ways of making the best of the desert. Plants store water through months of drought or blossom and seed after rare rainfall in a matter of days, transforming bare landscape into dazzling fields of color. Animals live by night or burrow deep underground, or—as in the case of reptiles—are physiologically adapted to withstand the desert’s temperature extremes.

pictures Oases in the desert

Humans living in and on the fringes of deserts have developed unique lifestyles that usually feature nomadism—a fluid way of life that is able to adapt swiftly and creatively to the vicissitudes of this harsh environment. Some of the world’s earliest civilizations— including those of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia—formed on the margins of great deserts, where the strenuousness of life called for the utmost in human endeavor.

pictures Bedouins in the desert

The changing desert
Traditional nomadism is in most deserts a dying way of life. Colonialism, urban biased political structures, and modern lifestyles and technologies derived from the West have proved antipathetic to traditional peoples everywhere, and the peoples of the desert are no exception. In next image we shall see how the desert, like every other biome, is facing unprecedented challenges to its very survival. In the late 19th and 20th centuries many deserts were found to harbor important mineral reserves, most significantly oil and natural gas, and consequently were and continue to be subject to intensive exploitation. Perhaps more damaging still has been the ambition to “make the deserts bloom”—to irrigate formerly arid land, often by exploiting nearby rivers or the water table.

pictures oil in the desert

Today you find life in the desert of all kinds from animals and plants to humans , Where he built the human small villages to big cities and skyscrapers .

WEALTH IN THE DESERT

Deserts are treasure-houses of some of the earth’s most sought-after resources, including oil. Exploitation of such resources has often been bought at great environmental cost, however, and humankind is only now realizing the true value of the desert—as a precious natural habitat. Since ancient times deserts have been used as a source of metals and minerals. In ancient Egypt, for instance, gold was regularly extracted from the Western Desert and used lavishly in the creation of royal artefacts, such as those that adorned the tomb of Tutankhamen. The irrigation of semiarid desert fringes, too, is an age-old practice and was the basis of some of the world’s oldest civilizations .
However, it is only in the last hundred years or so that the development of new technologies and transportation infrastructures has enabled the wholesale exploitation of desert wealth, with the result that pristine wildernesses have been transformed into semi-industrialized landscapes of mines, oil wells, highways, and pipelines. Above all, it was the discovery of oil, especially in the Middle East, that began a new age in the history of the desert.

pictures Cities in the desert

Exploitation of desert areas has often been reckless. Because deserts are often perceived as “empty,” any degree of human intervention in the landscape has appeared justifiable. Mining, drilling, and irrigation have caused severe environmental damage in many arid areas. Moreover, as deserts have become sites of economic exploitation, they have also become subjects of political and military dispute. The Gulf War of the early 1990s was to a large degree an “oil war,” fought on all sides to preserve access and rights to what is an increasingly precious commodity.

As our knowledge of deserts has improved—both in terms of their place in the global environmental jigsaw and their value as ecological havens—a more balanced approach to their exploitation has begun to emerge. The development of solar-energy plants offers a model for such an approach, in which a renewable desert resource—in this case, sunlight—is exploited at minimal environmental cost. The preservation of Antarctica—known to be a potentially rich source of oil—under international law is another promising sign of changing attitudes to the desert.

Solar energy in the desert

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video of the desert

2011-06-27T02:33:00.000+01:00

Beautiful video of the desert

This is Beautiful video from the desert and the Desert Algerian

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the desert what is a desert pictures of the desert video of the desert in the desert

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