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While true wilderness is increasingly rare, wild nature (e.g., unmanaged forests, uncultivated grasslands, wildlife, wildflowers) can be found in many locations previously inhabited by humans. Goals for the benefit of people and natural systems, commonly expressed by environmental scientists and environmentalists include:
For example, William Cronon writes that what he calls a wilderness ethic or cult may "teach us to be dismissive or even contemptuous of such humble places and experiences", and that "wilderness tends to privilege some parts of nature at the expense of others", using as an example "the mighty canyon more inspiring than the humble marsh."
Wilderness is generally defined as areas that have not been significantly modified by human activity. Wilderness areas can be found in preserves, estates, farms, conservation preserves, ranches, national forests, national parks, and even in urban areas along rivers, gulches
Matters are complicated by the fact that the words nature and natural have more than one meaning. On the one hand there is the main dictionary meaning for nature: "The phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of the earth, as opposed to humans or human creations."
The Gobi Desert is the fastest expanding desert on Earth, as it transforms over 3,600 square kilometres (1,400 square miles) of grassland into wasteland annually. [58] Although the Gobi Desert itself is still a distance away from Beijing , reports from field studies state there are large sand dunes forming only 70 km (43.5 mi) outside the city.
Mid-latitude deserts occur between 30° and 50° North and South. They are mostly in areas remote from the sea where most of the moisture has already precipitated from the prevailing winds. They include the Tengger and Sonoran Deserts. [36] Monsoon deserts are similar. They occur in regions where large temperature differences occur between sea ...
The World Wide Fund for Nature highlights a number of desert ecoregions that have a high degree of biodiversity and endemism: [1] 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]
Many of the world's deserts are caused by these climatological high-pressure areas, [14] within the subtropics. This regime is known as a semiarid/arid subtropical climate, which is generally in areas adjacent to powerful cold ocean currents. Examples of this climate are the coastal areas of Southern Africa and the west coast of South America. [15]