They cover approximately 1/3 of the dry land of our planet (3, p1). There may also be an extreme variation between warm and cool seasons, including extreme winds and storms due to the mixing of cold and warm air.ĭeserts are vitally important to the planetary ecosystem. This is because the rock and sand absorb heat during the day and releases it at night. Some experience vast temperature fluctuations, especially hot deserts which may reach unbearable heat during the day and extreme cold at night (2). High evaporation leaves behind higher salt levels, affecting further which plants can grow and the individual size and the numbers of herbivores that may feed on them and, in turn, carnivores. Deserts will differ depending on their climate and location and their overall aridity can influence many things, not least of all the ecology, food chain, plant and animal types. A desert may receive far more than the “average†in one year and not experience any rainfall the year before and the year after. The coarse nature of the soil means most moisture seeps through the top soil rapidly.įurthermore, what precipitation a desert does experience is erratic. The higher the ratio, the less available moisture there is. For deserts, evapotranspiration ratio exceeds average annual rainfall by anything from 2:1 to 33:1. This is the amount of water that the landscape would lose when available (1). These two aspects are combined into something called evapotranspiration. This means a high rate of water loss through plant reclamation (called transpiration) and through evaporation. But more than simply having low rainfall, a desert is “aridâ€. The simple explanation is that deserts are topographic landscapes that receive little precipitation in a typical year. How we define the desert biome are not about the types of rock, or the amount of sand, or even the temperature because there are both cold and hot deserts. But deserts are far more than this and there are multiple types. Deserts conjure up specific ideas about topography: typically, that they are dry and sandy dunes or rock, or a mixture of both.
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