Map

The orange and yellow parts show deserts over the world.

Abiotic Factors
Sand is one of the things you can find all over the desert;
there is no place you can’t find sand. Sand is tiny pieces
of stone or rocks been hit into each other for millions of
years in water.
Stones or rocks are bigger pieces of stone or rock, stones
or rocks can be found some places in the desert. Stones
come from volcanoes or made naturally.
There is water in the desert; it can be very deep under
the ground or in the atmosphere (air).

Native Plants and Adaption

There are a lot of plants in the desert, but we only
choose three, the three plants are:

• Desert lily
• Crimson Hedgehog Cactus
• Cactus Mammillaria

Desert lily is native to the deserts of southern California

and western Arizona. Desert lily adapted a little. The
desert lily doesn’t live that long time, but a bulb on it
collects moister, so when the bulb is full it drops down on
the ground and then it lives longer time.
Crimson Hedgehog cactus is native to the American
continent. The Crimson Hedgehog Cactus has adapted
after generation to generation. It got small, and small
then other cactuses, more and more pushed
together.
Cactus mammillaria is native to Central Mexico.
Cactus mammillaria adapted like the other cactuses.
Animals destroyed it because of the water it had
inside, so it spines on it so the animal couldn’t
destroy it.

Native Animals and how they adapted

Desert Kangaroo Rat – The desert kangaroo rat can
be found in the deserts of California and Arizona. It
usually grows up to 38 cm including its tail, and
weighs usually about 65g. It looks like a mini
kangaroo and its hair above is yellow and white
underneath and a white bit at the end of the tail. The
thing that sticks out with the desert kangaroo rat is that it
has huge eyes. They dig holes of 1.5m. The desert
kangaroo rat has adapted by digging holes in the ground
for protection from predators.

Desert Kangaroo Rat

Desert big horn sheep – The desert big horn sheep can be
found in the deserts with Rocky Mountains. It has an
excellent eye sight and can spot predators from far away.
Their horns can weigh up to 14 kg. The female sheep
usually known as rams weighs up to 119-127 kg and
measures 160-180cm. The male sheep usually known as
ewes weighs up to 53-91 kg and measures 150cm. The
desert big horn sheep has adapted by having a good eye
sight to spot predators.
Desert big horn sheep

Desert Tortoise – It can be found in the deserts of

California and Arizona. It usually grows 23-38 cm and the
height is 10-15 cm. It usually weighs 4-7 kg. The usually
live 80 years but some has been 100 years. When the
male tortoises meet they tend to start a fight, 95% of
their life is spent underground. The time when their most
active is in spring when flowers and plants start to grow
The way it's adapted is by how it can take incredible heat.

Desert Tortoise

Activities
There are a lot of activities you can do in the desert. You
can drive ATV (a four wheeled via call) flying up and down
the sand, bus tour where you see a lot of things like
trees, plants, animal, and other stuff, you can go around
the desert, motorcycle (two wheeled via call) also flying
up and down the sand, and sand boarding, it’s like
snowboarding but on sand instead of snow.

Biome Beside
Grasslands are mostly beside desert, when you get to the
end of the desert it’s just like going in to a new world.
There can also be a mountain beside deserts.

Climate:

Hot. Dry, but there

is more to climate in
the desert. First, there
is more than one type
of desert. We will look
at two types of deserts. Subtropical (hot) and temperate
(cold).The ranges for temperature and precipitation are shown in
the figures below.
At the higher end of this range, most of the precipitation tends to
fall during one season, with the effect that water is in short supply
for much of the year. It all depends on how you define a desert.
The temperature range for the subtropical desert in the top left
figure goes too far to the right. The temperate grassland and
desert biomes outlined in the second graph are not separated; the
desert part of this would be the drier part. Finally, if one inserts
the woodland biome into the figure, as many ecologists do
(bottom figure), the temperate grassland and desert are displaced
to the colder range of the subtropical desert range. Remember
that biomes are human constructs and that in nature there are not
fences around each of the biomes, with little gates so you know
when you are entering and leaving biomes. They grade into each
other

In any event, what we will call subtropical desert is fairly warm,

with average annual temperatures above 10° C and precipitation
up to 100 cm/year, again precipitation is less (usually much less)
than 100 cm/year and average annual temperature is less than
10° C.

How we Treat the Deserts

One of the biggest threats to the desert is
development. When air-conditioning came people
voluntarily went and lived in the desert, another
reason is many people mine. Many deserts have no
made mining in deserts illegal because it stopped
plants in the desert from growing. Global warming
from CO2 emissions is a predicted affect to the
desert biomes. It can rise the average temperature
which can be an affect to animals and plants by it
getting to hot for them to live there. Humans have
been also a part of it by them creating firewood
activities in rainforests are just causing them to
make more deserts but with no desert animals
which is called *desertification*.

Endangered Species

Desert Kangaroo Rat

Desert big horn

sheep
Desert Tortoise

Impact
The impact of the possible climate change in the
desert biomes is global warming. CO2 is the
warming of the globe. This happens when gases
are CO2 emissions are released into the air. CO2 is
one of the main gases which produce global
warming. It is said that the temperature is going to
rise 6 degrees in the next 50 years.

Global Importance
Deserts are important because of its high range of plants
and animals living there. Two thirds of the world’s oil is
also found in the desert, which is now powering must of
the world. Also the desert provides a large amount of
solar and wind energy.
 How we worked
We split the work up into parts equally so it wouldn’t be
too hard for some people. We used a lot of time
discussing figuring out how we would do this, the design
and information.

By Emil, Fredric and Jakob