Landscapes and Landforms
By
Evan Armstrong
Deserts
• A desert is a barren landscape which loses more moisture than it
gains. They generally receive very little rainfall and the small amount
they do get is in the form of a few large storms.
Facts about deserts:
• Any location that receives less than 25 centimetres of rain per year is
considered a desert. Deserts are found on every continent and cover
more than one fifth of the Earth's land.
• Deserts have extreme temperature ranges. Ranging from a scorching
50 ° C during the day to a freezing -18° C at night. The wide range in
temperatures is due to the lack of moisture which helps stabilise the
temperature.
• Fact 3
• Fact 4
Plants and animals
Human impact
• Deserts are very vulnerable to the impact of humans due to their
fragile ecosystem. Desertification is the process by which fertile land
becomes desert, typically as a result of drought, deforestation, or
inappropriate agriculture. The dust bowl in the USA is an example of
desertification where excessive agriculture lead to massive choking
dust storms that killed people and live stock.
Ocean
Human impact – mountaintop removal
• Mountaintop removal mining devastates
the biosphere, turning areas that should
be lush with forests and wildlife into
barren moonscapes. Huge machines, push
rock and dirt into nearby streams and
valleys, forever burying waterways to
reach the coal underneath.
Human impact – rainforest removal
• Tropical rainforests cover a massive amount of the world’s surface
and each year over 90,000 square miles are harvested for human use.
Nearly 2% of the rainforest is lost annually and approximately 137
species of plants, animals and insects disappear everyday. Once the
trees have been cut down, the land is used for agriculture.