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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 ...
Deserts, rain forests, plains, and other areas—including the most developed urban sites—all have distinct forms of wildlife. While the term in popular culture usually refers to animals that are untouched by civilized human factors, most scientists agree that wildlife around the world is (now) impacted by human activities.
Desertification is a gradual process of increased soil aridity.Desertification has been defined in the text of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) as "land degradation in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid regions resulting from various factors, including climatic variations and human activities."
The Wilderness Act defines wilderness as "an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammelled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain." [41] Wilderness designation helps preserve the natural state of the land and protects flora and fauna by prohibiting development and providing for non-mechanized recreation only.
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]
Many examples of convergent evolution have been identified in desert organisms, including between cacti and Euphorbia, kangaroo rats and jerboas, Phrynosoma and Moloch lizards. [82] Deserts present a very challenging environment for animals. Not only do they require food and water but they also need to keep their body temperature at a tolerable ...
The Arabian Desert’s sunshine duration index is very high by global standards: between 2,900 hours (66.2% of daylight hours) and 3,600 hours (82.1% of daylight hours), but typically around 3,400 hours (77.6% of daylight hours). Thus clear-sky conditions with plenty of sunshine prevail over the region throughout the year, and cloudy periods ...
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.