Desert Biomes

By:Catie Shaw

&Simon Murphy

The Desert biomes receive less than 25 centimeters of precipitation annually, and are always characterized by a very dry, or

arid climate.The four types of deserts:

• Hot

• Semiarid

• Coastal

• Cold

Food Web

Poisonous Desert Animals

The Gila Monster is one of the only poisonous lizards in the world.

The Western Diamondback rattlesnake is a viper. Vipers have a pair of long hollow fangs in the upper jaw.  Their poison is

sent out through the two teeth.

The most venomous desert scorpion is the bark scorpion

which is about two inches long and a translucent, light brown

color.

Biodiversity of a Desert

Long-eared Hedgehog,

China

Coyote, US and Mexico

Armadillo, South America and Argentina

Llama, Peru Chile Penguin, Antarctica

Human Activities Harm Deserts• Mining - not only do the mining operations themselves disturb the desert habitat and

plants and animals that live there, the roads built to get needed equipment into the mines also destroy the desert. Uranium mining creates a host of radioactive hazards.    

• Tourism - as the people who love this wonderful planet we live on, sometimes in our stampede to experience all the wonders of nature, we can "love it to death".    

• Farming - as the population on our planet continues to increase at an alarming rate (estimated at 6 billion by October 1999), the demand for more agricultural products, needed to feed these billions of people, will also increase. With modern technology, it is becoming increasingly easier to turn dry, arid desert habitat into productive farmland. Unfortunately, these lands are over cultivated and soon fall victim to desertification.    

• Ranching - overgrazing is one of the major threats to the desert habitat. Mismanagement and overuse of land is putting severe pressure on desert habitat areas.    

• Drilling operations - oil drilling operations in desert habitat areas alter the ecology of the desert. The high level of oil product usage in the world is destroying desert habitat. Pollution, produced by car exhaust, increases global warming, which, in turn, changes weather patterns. These changes result in climatic alterations that can shift the fragile balance needed to maintain the dry, arid conditions of the desert.

Places with Desert Biomes•Australia

•Northern Africa (Egypt, Niger, Libya, Sudan, Tunisia, etc)

•Chile

•The Middle East (especially Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iraq, Kuwait and UAE)

•Mexico

•South Africa

•Namibia

•Somalia

•Central Asia (Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, etc)

Types of Pollution• Deserts are being used as dump sites for nuclear

waste and as nuclear testing grounds. Recently, a site was opened in the desert of New Mexico to be used for the storage of nuclear waste. On July 6, 1962 a 100-kiloton nuclear bomb was exploded in the Nevada desert displacing about 12 million tons of earth. The crater is 320 feet deep and 1,200 feet across. The site in the Great Victoria Desert of Australia where nuclear tests were done in the 1950’s and 1960’s is still heavily contaminated with radioactivity. Deserts are remote, which is why many have been used for nuclear weapons research.

Natural Disasters in the Desert

Rain does fall occasionally in deserts, and desert storms are often violent. A record 44 millimeters (1.7 in) of rain once fell

within 3 hours in the Sahara. Large Saharan storms may deliver up to 1 millimeter per minute. Normally dry

stream channels, called arroyos or wadis, can quickly fill after heavy rains, and flash

floods make these channels dangerous.

Endangered Desert Species

Gila Monster

Ocelot

Kangaroo RatDesert Tortoise

Climate

• Average Annual Temperature- 64 degrees F• Average precipitation- 1 inch• Five seasons- Fall, Winter, Spring,

Foresummer, Summer Monsoon

Seasons• Fall- September to November, plants start to

dry and die.• Winter- December to January, mild

temperatures.• Spring- February to April, wildflowers start

to appear.• Foresummer- May to June, hottest, driest

part of the year.• Summer Monsoon- July to August, windy,

some precipitation.

Climate

• Average Annual Temperature- 64 degrees F• Average precipitation- 1 inch• Five seasons- Fall, Winter, Spring,

Foresummer, Summer Monsoon• Mostly located around places that spend

most of the year in the sun.

Climate (cont.)

• Droughts are major problems due to low precipitation

• Large amounts of wind during Summer Monsoons in late summer.

Geology

• Alluvial fans, when sediment spills into a fan shaped pile, are unique characteristics of deserts.

• Blowouts are common in deserts, where the wind will blow a depression into the ground.

• Strange rock columns, also know as hoodoo, are common sights in the desert.

• The border of the Mojave Desert is defined by the San Andreas Fault Line.

Sources• http://library.thinkquest.org/5788/• http://rmhs.dist214.k12.il.us/classes/

lepbilscience/biome.html• http://www.worldbiomes.com/• http://www.enchantedlearning.com/biomes/ • http://inchinapinch.com/hab_pgs/terres/

desert/desert.htm

Sources (cont.)

• http://www.blueplanetbiomes.org/desert_climate_page.htm

• http://www.scenicdrive.org/pp0202seasons.htm

• http://www.desertusa.com/mag99/sep/papr/desfeatures.html