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The Desert:An Example of Weathering and Erosion
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What is a desert?• A landscape or region
• Very low precipitation (less than 10 inches of water per year)
• Sometimes more water evaporates than is received in rain
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Is there more than one kind of desert?• There are hot deserts and cold deserts
Cold desertHot desert
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How are cold deserts made?• The main form of precipitation in a
cold desert is snow or fog• The snow never melts and thick ice
forms• No plants can grow and few, if any,
animals live here
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How are hot deserts made?
The wind acts in three ways:• It weathers the rock and breaks it
into sediments• Sediments are transported by the
wind• Sediments are deposited
somewhere else
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How are hot deserts made?• Over millions of years, wind
blows sediments into heaps that grow into dunes
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How are deserts made?
• Sometimes the sediments hit very hard rocks and only part of the rock is eroded away, creating rock formations
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Some desert facts:
• Deserts cover about 20% to 30% of Earth’s surface
• About 1 billion people live on desert land
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More facts:• The Sahara Desert is the largest
hot desert in the world
• Antarctica has the largest cold desert in the world
mesas
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Plants (Flora)You probably thought of cactus. Like most desert plants, they …
• Need little water• Are salt-tolerant• Often have few plants, but
much variety
• © Eli SnyderProvided by Free Nature Picture
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Animals (Fauna)You probably thought of camels, but the desert has many small animals.
• That includes kangaroo rats, jackrabbits, birds and lizards
• They are out at night because of the daytime heat
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What about people?
• People must adapt to the environment.• Hot deserts are REALLY hot• Cold deserts are REALLY cold
• There is difficulty getting water and food
• Often life is nomadic (roaming), yet 1 billion people live in desert regions
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Desert Vocabulary• Mesas and buttes are hard rock
landforms that have been eroded away by water
mesa butte
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Desert Vocabulary• Salt pan or playa is a lake of salt
water that dries out in the dry season and forms a layer of salt crystal on the ground
Salt pan or playa
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Desert Vocabulary• A wadi is a dry river bed. Rain
doesn’t sink into the ground and the result is flash floods.
wadiPhoto by Gila Brand.
flash floodCredit: Shootthedevgru at en.wikipedia
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Desert Vocabulary
• A haboob is a thick dust storm or sandstorm that occurs in Africa, Arabia or India
Photo Credit: Stan Celestian, Glendale Community College.
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Deserts of the World
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