Desert

Prompt: The Daily Topic: "Can you write using imagery? Without thinking too much about it, write down either the word 'hot'; or the word 'cold'; Then write down next to it either the word 'wet' or the word 'dry.' Now, write a descriptive piece that attempts to make the reader feel the two words you've written down."

Hot and Dry: Desert

Imagine standing in the midst of a desert, on a hot and dry day, where only sand dunes can be seen for miles, and plants and insects as your companion!

A desert is that stretch of land which receives very little precipitation – less than ten inches per year. One third of the earth’s surface is a desert. Hot deserts have high daytime temperature and low night time temperature. Many deserts are formed by rain shadows where the mountains block the precipitation from reaching the desert.

Deserts can be classified in four major categories:
• Hot and dry
• Semiarid
• Coastal
• Cold

Sahara desert in Northern Africa is the largest hot and dry/non-polar desert in the world covering 9 million square km and 12 countries. The largest polar desert is the Antarctica desert followed by the Arctic desert.

Sand covers about 20 percent of the earth’s desert. The remaining surfaces constitute bedrock outcrops, desert soils, desert lakes and oases. Several types of dunes such as barchan, longitudinal, seif and star dunes exist across the desert.

There are six forms of deserts:
• Mountain and basin deserts
• Hamada deserts consisting of plateau landforms
• Regs, constituting rock pavements
• Formation by sand seas called Ergs
• Intermontane Basins
• Badlands, located at the margins of arid lands comprising clay-rich soil

Soil is usually course-textured, shallow and rocky in deserts. Fauna on the desert includes kangaroo rat, lizards and rabbits, apart from other insects, snakes and birds. In the Sahara region, camels and goats are the most domesticated animals. Flora includes leaves which are replete with water-conserving characteristics. Plants are mainly ground-hugging shrubs and short woody trees which tend to be small and thick. Cactus, turpentine bush, prickly pears, sotol, ephedras are some of the plants which grow in the deserts.

The desert environment is highly unsuitable for humans. However, the most traditional human life is the nomadic tribes such as Bedouin, Tuareg and Pueblo.

Deserts contain a great amount of mineral resources. Though deserts are flat and featureless, they are being seen as sources of solar energy.