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The Deserts. Jacob Seeloff. People often imagine a desert as a hot, scorching place with blowing sand and no vegetation. In fact, a desert landscape can be covered by gravel, clay, coarse soil, or even ice.
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The Deserts Jacob Seeloff
People often imagine a desert as a hot, scorching place with blowing sand and no vegetation. In fact, a desert landscape can be covered by gravel, clay, coarse soil, or even ice. • To be classified as a desert, a region must either receive 10 inches of rain or less in a given year or lose more moisture through evaporation than it receives through rainfall.
Scientists group deserts into three main categories: Arid, semi-arid, and extremely arid. • Arid deserts receive less than 10 inches of rain annually. • Semi-arid deserts receive between 10 and 20 inches of rain per year. • Extremely arid deserts many not see any rain for more than a year.
Deserts are also characterized by the type of precipitation they receive. • Asia’s Gobi desert is covered in snow during the winter months. • The Sahara, covering 3,500,000 square miles in Northern Africa—is hot all year round.
There are ten major deserts across the world: • Sahara • Turkestan • Gobi • Australian Outback • Thar • Patagonia • TaklaMakan • Arabian • North American • Kalahari