Top Ten Largest Deserts

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Top Ten Largest Deserts
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• Sahara

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• The Sahara covers huge parts of Algeria, Chad,
  Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger,
  Western Sahara, Sudan and Tunisia.

• The Sahara is almost as large as the continental
  United States, and is larger than Australia.
• The Saharas history goes back as much as 3
  million years.
• Some of the sand dunes can reach 180 meters (600
  ft) in height.
• Its name comes from the Tamajaq Tuareg language
  word Tenere, which means the desert, translated
  into the Arabic it gave Sahara
• The Sahara divides the continent into North and
  Sub-Saharan Africa.

• The Sahara has one of the harshest climates in
  the world. The wind often causes the sand to form
  sand storms and dust devils
• People lived on the edge of the desert thousands
  of years ago since, immediately after the last
  ice age, the Sahara was a much wetter place than
  it is today.
• Arabic is the most widely spoken language in the
  Sahara, but Berber people are also found there as
  well as the Beja who live in the Red Sea Hills of
  southeastern Egypt.
• A number of mines develop to exploit the desert's
  natural resources oil and natural gas in Algeria
  and Libya and large deposits of phosphates in
  Morocco and Western Sahara.

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Dromedary camel
Fennec Fox
Deathstalker Leiurus quinquestriatus
Berber children in mid-Sahara nomad
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• Arabian

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• The Arabian Desert stretches from Yemen to the
  Persian Gulf and Oman to Jordan and Iraq.
• It occupies most of the Arabian Peninsula with an
  area of 2,330,000 square kilometers (900,000
  mi²).
• At its center is the Rub'al-Khali, one of the
  largest continuous bodies of sand in the world.
• Gazelles, oryx, sand cats, and spiny-tailed
  lizards are just some of the desert-adapted
  species that survive in this extreme environment,
  which features everything from red dunes to
  deadly quicksand.
• The climate is extremely dry, and temperatures
  oscillate between extreme heat and seasonal
  nighttime freezes.
• This ecoregion holds little biodiversity,
  although a few endemic plants grow here.

• Many species, such as the striped hyena, jackal
  and honey badger have become extinct in this area
  due to hunting, human encroachment and habitat
  destruction. Other species have been successfully
  re-introduced, such as the endangered white oryx
  and the sand gazelle, and are protected at a
  number of reserves.
• The major ethnicities are Arabs, Kurds,
  Turkmeni, Assyrians
• The significant languages are Arabic, Kurdish,
  Aramaic, Armenian

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Turkmen man with camel
Honey Badger
Traditional Arabian Bedouin
Striped Hyena
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• Gobi

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• The Gobi (Mongolian ????, Govi or Gov',
  "gravel-covered plain") is the largest desert
  region in Asia.
• It covers parts of northern and northwestern
  China, and of southern Mongolia.
• The desert basins of the Gobi are bounded by the
  Altai Mountains and the grasslands and steppes of
  Mongolia on the north, by the Tibetan Plateau to
  the southwest, and by the North China Plain to
  the southeast.
• The Gobi is made up of several distinct
  ecological and geographic regions based on
  variations in climate and topography.
• This desert is the fourth largest in the world.

• The Gobi is most notable in history as part of
  the great Mongol Empire, and as the location of
  several important cities along the Silk Road.

• The Gobi is a rain shadow desert formed by the
  Himalaya range blocking rain-carrying clouds from
  reaching the Gobi.
• Gobi is a cold desert, and it is not uncommon to
  see frost and even snow on its dunes.

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Bactrian Camels
Herders wife and her son, southern Gobi desert,
Mongolia
Mongolian woman collecting firewood
Marbled polecat
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• Patagonian

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• The Patagonian Desert is the largest desert in
  the Americas and is the 5th in the world by area,
  occupying 260,000 square miles (673,000 km²).
• It is located primarily in Argentina with small
  parts in Chile
• It is bounded by the Andes, to its west, and the
  Atlantic Ocean to its east.
• It is a large cold winter desert
• It has about seven months of summer and five
  months of winter.
• Frost is not uncommon in the desert but snow is
  rare too dry.
• The burrowing owl, lesser rhea, guanaco,
  tuco-tuco, mara, pygmy armadillo, Patagonian
  weasel, puma, Patagonian gray fox, desert iguana,
  Jumping Cow Spider, and various species of eagle
  and hawk are a few of the variety of animals
  living in the region.

• The desert cave paintings indicating various
  indigenous peoples in its past.
• The area is sparsely populated today and those
  that do live here survive mainly by the raising
  of livestock such as sheep and goats.

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Guanaco
Pink fairy armadillo (pygmy armadillo)
Patagonian Mara
Tuco-tuco
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• Rubal Khali

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• The Rub' al Khali (Arabic ????? ??????), which
  translates as Empty Quarter in English, is one of
  the largest sand deserts in the world,
  encompassing most of the southern third of the
  Arabian Peninsula, including southern Saudi
  Arabia, and areas of Oman, the United Arab
  Emirates and Yemen.
• The desert covers some 650,000 square kilometers
  (250,000 square miles)
• Even the Bedouins only skirt the edges of the
  desert.
• With summer temperatures up to nearly 55 degrees
  Celsius (131 F) at noon, and dunes taller than
  the Eiffel Tower over 330 meters (1000 ft)
  the desert may be the most foreboding environment
  on Earth
• Geologically, the Empty Quarter is one of the
  most oil-rich places in the world.

• The expedition also led to the discovery of 31
  new plant species and plant varieties, as well as
  24 species of birds that inhabit the desert,
  which fascinated scientists as to how they have
  survived under the harsh conditions. These
  findings led the geologists to nickname the area
  Rub' al-Ghali, or the Valuable Quarter.

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White Oryx (Oryx leucoryx)
Arabian Wolf (Canis lupus arabs)
Ibex (Capra ibex nubiana )
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• Great Victoria

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• The Great Victoria Desert is a barren, arid, and
  sparsely populated desert ecoregion in southern
  AustraliaI
• It consists of many small sandhills, grasslands
  and salt lakes.
• It is over 700 kilometres (435 miles) wide,
  covers 424,400 sq kl (163,900 sq mi) .
• Due to the aridity and dryness of the desert,
  almost no farming activity is carried out there
• It is inhabited by many different groups of
  Indigenous Australians, including the Kogara and
  the Mirning.

• In 1875, British explorer Ernest Giles became the
  first European to cross the desert.
• He named the desert after the then-reigning
  British monarch, Queen Victoria.

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Anangu man in Inma (ceremony) decoration
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Thorny Devil (Moloch horridus)
Anangu Elders
Anangu women
Night Parrot, Kakapo (Geopsittacus occidentalis )
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• Kalahari

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• The Kalahari Desert is a large arid to semi-arid
  sandy area in southern Kgalagadi Africa extending
  900,000 km² (362,500 sq. mi.),
• Kalahari covers much of Botswana and parts of
  Namibia and South Africa.
• Kalahari has huge tracts of excellent grazing
  after good rains.
• The Kalahari supports some animals and plants
  because most of it is not true desert.
• There are small amounts of rainfall and the
  summer temperature is very high.
• The only permanent river, the Okavango, flows
  into a delta in the northwest, forming marshes
  that are rich in wildlife.
• Ancient dry riverbedscalled omurambatraverse
  the Central Northern reaches of the Kalahari and
  provide standing pools of water during the rainy
  season.

• Previously havens for wild animals from elephant
  to giraffe, and for predators such as lion and
  cheetah, the riverbeds are now mostly grazing
  spots, though leopard or cheetah can still be
  found.

• The San people or Bushmen have lived in the
  Kalahari for 20,000 years as hunter-gatherers.

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Meerkat
Bushmen, or Sanpeople
Giraffe
Lion
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• Great Basin

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• The Great Basin Desert, the largest U. S. desert
  that covers part of four states (Idaho, Nevada,
  Oregon, and Utah) and approximately 210,000
  square miles

• It is bordered by the Sierra Nevada Range on the
  west and the Rocky Mountains on the east, the
  Columbia Plateau to the north and the Mojave and
  Sonoran deserts to the south.

• This is a cool or "cold desert" due to its more
  northern latitude, as well as higher elevations
  (at least 3,000 feet, but more commonly from
  4,000 to 6,500 feet). In winter it gets snow.

• Whirlwinds of dust often form over the land.
  These are called "dust devils".
• The region is one of high valleys, basins,
  numerous mountain ranges, many rivers, and salt
  flats (a large, level area of flat land
  containing salt deposits)

• Great Basin Desert is mostly covered by shrubs
  there are only occasional yuccas and very few
  cactus.

• A wide variety of animals lives there
  bighorn sheep, kit fox, coyote, skunk,
  black-tailed jackrabbit, ground
  squirrels, kangaroo rat and many species of mice.
  Bird species are very diverse in desert oases.

• 4 Native American cultures have lived in the area
  during the last 10,000 years or so Nevares
  Spring People (7000 bce), Mesquite Flat People
  (3000 bce), Saratoga Spring People (2000 years
  ago), nomadic Timbisha (1000 years ago). Several
  families of Timbisha (Shoshone tribe) still live
  at Furnace Creek
• The California Gold Rush brought the first
  Caucasians.

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Salt Lake City
Bighorn Sheep
Shoshonean Indians
Golden Eagle
Tarantula spider
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• Chihuahuan

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• The Chihuahuan Desert is located at the
  U.S.-Mexico border.

• In U.S. it covers parts of New Mexico, Texas,
  Arizona. In Mexico Chihuahua, most of Coahuila,
  Durango, Zacatecas and Nuevo León.

• It is 140,000 square miles (362,600 km²).
• It is the third largest desert within the Western
  Hemisphere and second largest in North America,
  after the Great Basin Desert.
• This desert is unique, as it has been sheltered
  from the influence of other arid regions such as
  the Sonora Desert by the large mountain ranges of
  the Sierra Madres. This isolation has allowed the
  evolution of many endemic species most notable
  is the high number of endemic plants. However,
  this ecoregion also sustains some of the last
  remaining populations of Mexican prairie dogs,
  wild American bison and pronghorn antelope.

• According to the World Wide Fund for Nature, the
  Chihuahuan Desert may be the most biologically
  diverse desert in the world, whether measured on
  species richness or endemism, although the region
  has been heavily degraded over time. Many native
  species have been replaced with creosote shrubs.
  The Mexican wolf, once abundant, has been
  extirpated. The main cause of degradation has
  been grazing.

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Agave cactus or prism cactus
American bison
Mexican prairie dogs
Pronghorn antelope
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• Thar

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• The Thar Desert (Hindi ??? ???????), also known
  as the Great Indian Desert, is a large, arid
  region in the northwestern part of the Indian
  subcontinent.
• Thar covers an area of more than 200,000 sq.
  km.,(140,000 sq. mi.)
• It lies mostly in the Indian state of Rajasthan,
  and extends into the southern portion of Haryana
  and Punjab states and into northern Gujarat
  state.
• It covers parts of Pakistan

• The main occupation of the people in desert is
  agriculture and animal husbandry.

• Due to the diversified habitat, the vegetation
  and animal life in this arid region is very rich.
  About 23 species of lizard and 25 species of
  snakes are found here and several of them are
  endemic to the region.
• Rajasthan desert festivals are celebrated every
  year, during winters. Dressed in brilliantly hued
  costumes, the people of the desert dance and sing
  haunting ballads of valor, romance and tragedy.
  The fair has snake charmers, puppeteers, acrobats
  and folk performers. Camels, of course, play a
  stellar role in this festival, where the rich and
  colorful folk culture of Rajasthan can be seen.

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Desert cat
Chinkara Jabeer Gazelle
Short-toed Eagle