Category The World Around us

The Caspian Sea is the Earth’s largest inland body of water. It lies at the junction of Europe and Asia, with the Caucasus Mountains to the west and the steppes of Central Asia to the east. It is bordered by Russia to the northwest, Azerbaijan to the west, Iran to the south, Turkmenistan to the southeast and Kazakhstan to the northeast. 

“The Caspian Sea is located in a dry region of the world,” Kukral told Live Science. Nevertheless, during harsh winters its entire northern half can freeze. 

The Caspian Sea is endorheic, meaning it has no natural outlets. More than 130 rivers flow into the Caspian Sea, according to Natural History Magazine, none of which are in the east. The primary tributary is the Volga River in the north, which provides about 80 percent of the inflowing water. The Ural River, also in the north, and the Kura River in the west, are also significant tributaries. The inflowing fresh water from these rivers dilute the water. Salinity changes from north to south, from 1.0 to 13.5 parts per thousand (ppt), according to Casp Info, a data-management project about the Caspian Sea funded by the European Union. By contrast, the North Atlantic Ocean has a salinity of 37 ppt, according to Encyclopedia Britannica.  

The most famous and financially valuable animal in the region is the beluga sturgeon, sometimes called the European or Caspian sturgeon. The world’s largest freshwater fish, the beluga sturgeon is known for its eggs, which are processed into caviar. The majority of the world’s beluga caviar comes from the Caspian Sea. This has caused problems with overfishing. Dams have also destroyed much of their spawning grounds, and pesticides used in land agriculture have limited their fertility. The beluga sturgeon is now critically endangered, according to the World Wildlife Fund. 

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The Great Victoria Desert (GVD) forms one of nine distinct sub-landscapes in the Alinytjara Wilurara region. It is the largest desert in Australia, spanning over 700 kilometres. Its pristine, arid wilderness includes red sand dunes, stony plains and dry salt lakes.

The desert is a part of Australia that houses the most populous and healthy population of Indigenous Australians belonging to groups like Pitjantjatjara, Mirning, and the Kogara. Large parts of the Great Victoria Desert, however, remain uninhabited as the climate and terrain are unsuitable for human settlement. Large, pristine areas of the desert are protected areas like the Mamungari Conservation Park.

Only drought resistant plants can survive the harsh desert environment. A few species of Acacia and Eucalyptus can be found here. Spinifex grasses occupy most the of the desert landscape amidst the sandy ridges. A few mammals and birds can be found in the Great Victoria Desert. Some examples are the great desert skink, the crest-tailed mulgara, the southern marsupial mole, the sandhill dunnart, etc. The large monitor lizards, the sand goanna and the perentie, and the dingo are the active predators of the Great Victoria Desert.

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Oleshky is the largest desert in Europe and it’s in an unusual place seeing as Ukraine is well-known for its rich agricultural land. In the 19th century, this area in the Kherson region was overused by sheep farmers and the grass gave way to sand which has reigned ever since. To stop the spreading desertification, the largest tree planting operation in history was carried out in the 20th century around the sand’s borders – 100,000 hectares of new trees! Oleshky is popular with visitors but some parts are considered no-go – landmines were left behind in certain areas during military exercises in the Soviet era.

As any desert, the Oleshky Sands have their own oases, dried up, wet, and mineral lakes, and 5 m high sand dunes covered with grass and bushes. Sandstorms are known to occur in these regions. In order to prevent the whole Black Sea region from turning into one big desert, in the 20th century, artificial forests were planted around the sands. Today, spreading over a territory of 100,000 hectares, these forests are one of the largest artificial forests in the world.

The sands are thought to be formed during the most recent ice age by aeolian processes accumulating and forming cliffs of lower parts of nearby river Dnieper. It is speculated that the number of vegetation was reduced by herds of sheep who were introduced there by Eduard von Falz-Fein who used the sands, formerly populated by weeds, as a pasture.

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The largest desert on earth is the Antarctic desert, covering the continent of Antarctica with a size of around 5.5 million square miles. The term deserts includes polar deserts, subtropical deserts, cold winter and cool coastal deserts, and are based on their geographical situation.

Like most global deserts, the Antarctic covers the entire continent. In fact, an astonishing 98 percent is permanently covered by a sheet of ice. It is considered a desert because it rains on average only 10 mm every year. Some experts even believe that certain parts located away from the coast have not had rain in the past 14 million years.

It’s covered by a permanent ice sheet that contains 90% of the Earth’s fresh water. Only 2% of the continent isn’t covered by ice, and this land is strictly along the coasts, where all the life that is associated with the land mass (i.e. penguins, seals and various species of birds) reside. The other 98% of Antarctica is covered by ice which averages 1.6 km in thickness.

There are no permanent human residents, but anywhere from 1,000 to 5,000 researchers inhabit the research stations scattered across the continent – the largest being McMurdo Station, located on the tip of Ross Island. Beyond a limited range of mammals, only certain cold-adapted species of mites, algaes, and tundra vegetation can survive there.

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 The Atacama Desert is on the other side of Eastern Patagonia. Therefore, you will find that it is surrounded by the Andes in its eastern part and by the Pacific Ocean in the west. The Atacama Desert is known as the driest non-polar place in the world. It could be several years without rain in one of the largest deserts in South America.

The desert occupies an area of about 105,000 square km. Large sections of the desert feature salt lakes, sand, felsic lava, and stony terrain. The Atacama Desert is known to be the world’s driest non-polar location. In the central sector of the desert, rainfall often does not occur for periods of up to four or five years. The species diversity of the Atacama Desert is highly restricted. Some parts of the desert are too dry to sustain any life form at all. Scorpions, desert butterflies, and wasps, the Atacama toad, lava lizards, iguanas, etc., are some of the Atacama Desert fauna. Birds visiting or residing in the desert include sparrows, hummingbirds, Andean flamingos, Humboldt penguins, etc. Seals and sea lions can be sighted along the coast.

Much of the Atacama Desert’s core is caked in thick salt deposits called playas, which can stretch for miles and are nearly half a meter thick (1.6 feet) in some places. The desert is speckled with stones that have been carried across the playas by powerful wind gusts. Alluvial fans, which are large, fan-shaped sediment deposits, connect the desert plateau with the mountains that surround it and suggest that water once flowed from the Andes into the desert.

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The Chihuahuan Desert is the largest hot desert in North America, located in the Southwestern United States and Northern Mexico. Its total area is 140,000 sq mi (360,000 km2).

Though the Chihuahuan Desert is the southernmost, it lies at a fairly high elevation and is not protected by any barrier from arctic air masses, so hard winter freezes are common. Its vegetation consists of many species of low shrubs, leaf succulents, and small cacti. Trees are rare. Rainfall is predominantly in the summer, but in the northern end there is occasionally enough winter rain to support massive blooms of spring annuals. The Chihuahuan Desert is unexpectedly rich in species despite the winter cold.

The eastern boundary of the Chihuahuan Desert is one of the oldest and richest centers of plant evolution on the North American continent. A wide variety of vegetation communities are present in the in the ecoregion, ranging from desert shrublands at lower elevations and conifer woodlands at the highest elevations. The Chihuahuan Desert boasts as many as 3,500 plant species, including nearly a quarter of the world’s cactus species. Approximately 1,000 of the plant species grow only in this ecoregion. Some distinctive habitat types in the Chihuahuan Desert include yucca woodlands, playas, gypsum dunes, and a diverse array of freshwater habitats. Vast desert grasslands and a wide variety of yuccas and agaves, including many endemic species, also make this desert extremely unique.

The Chihuahuan Desert is home to more than 170 species of amphibians and reptiles. At least 18 of these species are endemic to the Ecoregion. There are a surprisingly large number of endemic fish that occur in the Chihuahuan Desert as well—nearly half of the 110 fish species in the region are either endemic or of limited distribution. Most are relic species found in isolated springs in the closed basins.

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