Deserts
Desserts are vast sandy regions without water or vegetation.
Desert regions ate found in regions where the annual rainfall is less than two hundred millimeters. They are generally trade wind latitudes. Their extent vary with the size of the land mass.
Sahara and Arabia are extensive deserts in the northern hemisphere. The Thar desert in India and the deserts of North America are much smaller. In the southern hemisphere are the Atacama desert of South America, the kalahari desert of South Africa and the great western desert of Australia.
These deserts are very hot and dry on account of a very high temperature.
The desert is mostly a poor scrub land. But there are few fertile spots here and there and they are called Oases. Some of these Oases consist merely of a clump of palms surrounding a small spring of water. Some of them are vast and very fertile. The typical tree here is the date palm and the typical animal is the camel. It can live without water for many days.
There are two classes of people living in the desert. They are nomadic people wandering from place to place and the people who have settled in the Oases.
The people living in the Oases grow cereals and rear cattle. They cultivate the date palm.
The nomads, the wandering people live mainly in tents. But the people who live in the Oases build houses with thick stone walls and flat roofs. The stone walls keep them cool. The roofs are flat as there is no need to guard against rain.
In the Arctic and Antarctic regions lie vast stretches of desert sand. The land is a desert because of the extreme cold. It is too cold for the growth of trees.
Practically the only vegetation is moss and lichens, the reindeer is almost the only animal in this region. It provides milk, meat and clothes for the Eskimos in North-America and the people living in the Tundra regions in the Eurasia. Agriculture is impossible because the surface is frozen for three quarters of the year.
The life of the people of the desert show how man’s mode of living is influenced by his environment. But man can think and work and he is able to overcome obstacles. He can do so only after much thought or labour or expense.
For example, he brings water through canal and makes deserts fertile. In our country, we have the Rajasthan canal branching off from the Bakra Nangal reservoir Now a days a variety of crops are grown on both sides of the canal in the desert region of Rajasthan. Man can build railways and ports nearby so that food can be brought to the barren desert.