Desert Habitats(사막의 동식물 서식지)

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Desert Habitats(사막의 동식물 서식지)

Deserts cover about one fifth (20 percent) of the earth's land area. The desert is a harsh environment with very little rainfall and extreme temperatures; a desert is defined as a region that gets less than ten inches of precipitation per year.

Because of these dry conditions, there is limited plant and animal life in deserts. Desert plants (like cacti) are not abundant; neither is animal life.

Some deserts get both very hot (during the day) and very cold (during the night, when temperatures can drop well below freezing). Some deserts, however, are always cold (for example, the Gobi Desert in Asia, and the desert on the continent of Antarctica).

Different animals live in the different types of deserts. Animals that live in the desert have adaptations to cope with the lack of water, the extreme temperatures, and the shortage of food. To avoid daytime heat, many desert animals are nocturnal; they burrow beneath the surface or hide in the shade during the day, emerging at night to eat. Many desert animals do not have to drink at all; they get all the water they need from their food. Most desert animals are small.

Desert Extremes: The biggest desert is northern Africa's Sahara Desert; it covers roughly 3,500,000 square miles (9,065,000 square kilometers). The driest deserts are the Atacama desert of northern Chile, South America, and the Lut Desert in eastern Iran; these extreme deserts get less than half an inch (about 1 centimeter) of precipitation each year - and it is from condensed fog, and not from rain.​

Some of the largest deserts in the world:

       Desert activities to print:

Read the definitions below, then label the major deserts on the world map.

Arabian - covering most of the Arabian peninsula.
Atacama - running down the western coast of South America (in Chile).
Australian - hot deserts covering much of western and central Australia.
Iranian - northeast of the Arabian peninsula and west of the Thar desert.
Kalahari - covering much of the southeastern tip of Africa.
Namib - running down the southwestern coast Africa.
North American - rain shadow deserts in southwestern North America, in the USA and Mexico.
Patagonian - in southeastern South America.
Saharan - a huge desert covering much of northern Africa - the biggest desert in the world.
Takla Makan-Gobi - a continental desert in central Asia.
Thar - in northwest India.
Turkestan - in southern Russia .

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