Deserts of the World - Design with the Desert: Conservation and Sustainable Development - page 1

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Deserts of the World*
Ron Cooke, Andrew Warren, and Andrew Goudie
CONTENTS
1.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 3
1.2 The Sahara and Its Margins ................................................................................................. 4
1.3 Southern Africa ...................................................................................................................... 7
1.4 The Great Indian Desert or Thar ....................................................................................... 11
1.5 Arabia and the Middle East ................................................................................................ 14
1.6 China and Central Asia ...................................................................................................... 17
1.7 Australia ................................................................................................................................ 19
1.8 South America ...................................................................................................................... 21
1.9 North America ..................................................................................................................... 25
1.10 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 27
1.11 Postscript ............................................................................................................................... 29
References ....................................................................................................................................... 29
1.1 Introduction
To some, deserts are simply barren areas, barely capable of supporting life forms. Many
places meet this criterion: Mangin's The Desert World , published in 1869, 1 embraced envi-
ronments as diverse as the waste heaps of the china clay quarries in Cornwall, the steppes
of Tartary, the Dead Sea, and the Arctic wildernesses. But most deserts are areas of arid-
ity and they are usually defined scientifically in terms of some measure of water short-
age. Such measures, indices of aridity, are commonly based on the relationships between
water gained from precipitation and water lost by evaporation or transportation. There are
plenty of indices to choose from, the differences between them reflecting different objec-
tives of classification.2 2
The areas shown in Figure 1.1 constitute the warm deserts realm. Within it, there are five
major regions of aridity: the deserts of North and South America, North Africa, Eurasia,
southern Africa, and Australia. They cover a third of the Earth's land surface and are the
context for this study of desert geomorphology. † There are also arid areas in the polar