Hello Class,
My journey through the world deserts took me to the Sahara
Desert in Northern Africa, the Sahara is one of the largest deserts on our
planet, it places third behind the Antarctic and Arctic regions for its dry
climate and low precipitation. The Sahara was created through a combination of
warm winds coming from the west of Africa by an adjacent offshore cold winds
warming from the sea when entering dry land, to dry air arriving from the South
near the equator due to evaporation of water which causes the cool rainwater to
warm and evaporate as it moves away from the equator. The final and major
faction to this desert is rain shadow from the Northwest from the Atlas
Mountains and from the Southeast from the Ethiopian Highlands. Rain shadow is
caused by cool winds condensing and forming rain on one side of the mountain
and once it crosses to the other side begins to descend, warm up, and provides
little to no rain to that region. The Sahara has many sand dunes and oasis, but
these features are created from special events that happen throughout the
desert itself.
The Sahara Desert. (2019)
The Sahara, through the force of heavy winds, pushes sand across
the region. This creates the waves you see in the photo above which are called
traps. Once the sand hits a big enough trap it will stay on the resting side of
the trap until that is eroded and pushed further East across the Sahara. This forms
cross-bedding underneath each trap, this is caused by the direction of the wind.
If the wind was to change it will change the cross-bedding.
The Oasis. (2019)
This windy event, through enough force can create blowouts
which leads to the desert opening the water table. This leads to the production
of an Oasis, where water can form and creates small ponds to small lake of
water and helps create nearby vegetation (As seen in above photo). The
sediments from this desert is both sand and silt that is travelling from west Africa
to the Middle East. The silt from this desert can travel across the world which
is called loess, some of that silt is even in the United States in farmlands
which helps create the agriculture we have within our nation.
Respectfully,
Derek
References:
The Sahara Desert. (2019) Received From: https://geographical.co.uk/opinion/item/3203-turning-the-sahara-into-a-solar-farm
The Oasis. (2019) Received From: https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/oasis/
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