Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 3.2a
The deserts and arid lands of the world
Source:
Compiled from various sources
Figure 3.2b
Areas at risk from desertification
Source:
Compiled from various sources
the 1990s it is East Africa; in the 1980s it was
Ethiopia; in the 1960s it was the Sahel; in the
1930s it was the Dustbowl, described with such
feeling by John Steinbeck in
The Grapes of
Wrath
. Although these have gripped the popular
imagination, they are only the more serious
examples of perhaps the most ubiquitous
climatological problem that society has to face,
Drought strikes areas as far apart as Australia
and the Canadian Prairies, or southern Africa
and the China, with some regularity, often with
considerable severity, and with an impact that is
