The Desert Biome: One of the Most Interesting Biomes on Earth

The desert biome is one of the most interesting biomes on earth. An area of land is considered a desert when it produces less than 10 inches of rainfall throughout the year. There are many different types of deserts in the world, with a very diverse group of plants and animals. It has temperatures that are generally hot during the day, and cold at night.

A desert is a region so arid due to little rainfall that it supports only sparse and widely spaced vegetation or no vegetation at all. There are many different types of deserts including Trade wind deserts, Midlatitude deserts, Rain shadow deserts, and many more. The largest trade wind desert is the Sahara desert that is located in North Africa. Dry winds use cloud cover to allow more sunlight to heat the land. The Sahara desert has reached temperatures of 122 degrees Fahrenheit. The Mid Latitude deserts have many interior drainage basins far from oceans and have a wide range of annual temperatures. These deserts are more common in North America.

Deserts cover about a fifth of the Earth’s surface. Also, deserts can be found on every continent. Deserts are a part of a wider classification of regions called drylands. They are found worldwide along two fingers parallel to the equator at 25-35 degrees latitude in the northern and southern hemispheres. Deserts are made up of bare soil and low vegetation. Deserts make up approximately one fifth of the Earth's land surface, which is about 20.9 million square miles ("Basic Facts about Deserts").

There are three reasons for the hot and dry climate in deserts. These are from Hadley cells, rain shadows, and ocean currents. First, Hadley cells are pockets of air named after the meteorologist from Britain who discovered it. In Hadley cel...

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Desert Animals. The Animal Spot, n.d. Web. 1 Apr. 2014.

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Rice, Stanly A. "Deserts, Warm." Encyclopedia of Biodiversity. New York: Facts on File, 2012. 175-82. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 1 Apr. 2014.

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