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The harsh climate of most desert regions is a major obstacle in conducting research into these ecosystems. In the environments requiring special adaptations to survive, it is often difficult or even impossible for researchers to spend extended periods of time investigating the ecology of such regions.
The Nama Karoo of Namibia has the world's richest desert fauna. [8] The Chihuahuan desert and Central Mexican matorral are the richest deserts in the Neotropics. [9] The Carnarvon xeric shrublands of Australia are a regional center for endemism. [1] The Sonoran and Baja deserts of Mexico are unusual desert communities dominated by giant ...
A desert is a landscape where little precipitation occurs and, consequently, living conditions create unique biomes and ecosystems. The lack of vegetation exposes the unprotected surface of the ground to denudation .
To delineate "hot desert climates" from "cold desert climates", a mean annual temperature of 18 °C (64.4 °F) is used as an isotherm so that a location with a BW type climate with the appropriate temperature above this isotherm is classified as "hot arid subtype" (BWh), and a location with the appropriate temperature below the isotherm is ...
Human disturbance poses the number one concern to this fragile ecosystem. The Sonoran desert contains the two large cities of Tucson and Phoenix, Arizona, which contain over 3 million people. [15] These dense human populations deplete the water table of the entire desert and are sending the desert towards desertification.
The Atacama Desert (Spanish: Desierto de Atacama) is a desert plateau located on the Pacific coast of South America, in the north of Chile.Stretching over a 1,600-kilometre-long (1,000-mile) strip of land west of the Andes Mountains, it covers an area of 105,000 km 2 (41,000 sq mi), [2] which increases to 128,000 km 2 (49,000 sq mi) if the barren lower slopes of the Andes are included.
The Great Basin Desert is part of the Great Basin between the Sierra Nevada and the Wasatch Range in the western United States.The desert is a geographical region that largely overlaps the Great Basin shrub steppe defined by the World Wildlife Fund, and the Central Basin and Range ecoregion defined by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and United States Geological Survey.
The Mojave Desert is the hottest desert in North America, located primarily in southeastern California and Southern Nevada. Its total area is 22,000 sq mi (57,000 km 2). The largest cold desert is the Great Basin Desert, which encompasses much of the northern Basin and Range Province, north of the Mojave Desert.