Deserts make up about 35% of the earth's landmess. True or false?
397974
FALSE! actually, About one-fifth of Earth's land surface is desert. to that's 20%. : )\n\ntry this link if your not convince. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert
533448
if you could collect all the grains of sand,from every beach on this planet, that still wouldn't make up a fraction of the amount of stars out there,\nand out of all these stars,and the billions of planets surrounding them.Its hard to believe that life only exists on this little rock.
629574
deserts exists in almost all types of altitudes. it is caused due to lack of water and abudance of sand. so i would say the average would be the mid point between below sea level and mountanous level(5000 mts)...that would be about 2500 or less mts
1043134
Deserts cover about one fifth of the Earth’s surface and occur where rainfall is less than 50 cm/year. Although most deserts, such as the Sahara of North Africa and the deserts of the southwestern U.S., Mexico, and Australia, occur at low latitudes, another kind of desert, cold deserts, occur in the basin and range area of Utah and Nevada and in parts of western Asia. Most deserts have a considerable amount of specialized vegetation, as well as specialized vertebrate and invertebrate animals. Soils often have abundant nutrients because they need only water to become very productive and have little or no organic matter. Disturbances are common in the form of occasional fires or cold weather, and sudden, infrequent, but intense rains that cause flooding.\n\nThere are relatively few large mammals in deserts because most are not capable of storing sufficient water and withstanding the heat. Deserts often provide little shelter from the sun for large animals. The dominant animals of warm deserts are nonmammalian vertebrates, such as reptiles. Mammals are usually small, like the kangaroo mice of North American deserts.\n\nDesert biomes can be classified according to several characteristics.\nThere are four major types of deserts:\n\n\nHot and Dry\nSemiarid\nCoastal\nCold \n\nHot and Dry Desert\nThe four major North American deserts of this type are the Chihuahuan, Sonoran, Mojave and Great Basin. Others outside the U.S. include the Southern Asian realm, Neotropical (South and Central America), Ethiopian (Africa) and Australian.\nThe seasons are generally warm throughout the year and very hot in the summer. The winters usually bring little rainfall. Temperatures exhibit daily extremes because the atmosphere contains little humidity to block the Sun’s rays. Desert surfaces receive a little more than twice the solar radiation received by humid regions and lose almost twice as much heat at night. Many mean annual temperatures range from 20-25° C. The extreme maximum ranges from 43.5-49° C. Minimum temperatures sometimes drop to -18° C.\n\nRainfall is usually very low and/or concentrated in short bursts between long rainless periods. Evaporation rates regularly exceed rainfall rates. Sometimes rain starts falling and evaporates before reaching the ground. Rainfall is lowest on the Atacama Desert of Chile, where it averages less than 1.5 cm. Some years are even rainless. Inland Sahara also receives less than 1.5 cm a year. Rainfall in American deserts is higher—almost 28 cm a year.\n\nSoils are course-textured, shallow, rocky or gravely with good drainage and have no subsurface water. They are coarse because there is less chemical weathering. The finer dust and sand particles are blown elsewhere, leaving heavier pieces behind.\n\nCanopy in most deserts is very rare. Plants are mainly ground-hugging shrubs and short woody trees. Leaves are “replete” (fully supported with nutrients) with water-conserving characteristics. They tend to be small, thick and covered with a thick cuticle (outer layer). In the cacti, the leaves are much-reduced (to spines) and photosynthetic activity is restricted to the stems. Some plants open their stomata (microscopic openings in the epidermis of leaves that allow for gas exchange) only at night when evaporation rates are lowest. These plants include: yuccas, ocotillo, turpentine bush, prickly pears, false mesquite, sotol, ephedras, agaves and brittlebush.\n\nThe animals include small nocturnal (active at night) carnivores. The dominant animals are burrowers and kangaroo rats. There are also insects, arachnids, reptiles and birds. The animals stay inactive in protected hideaways during the hot day and come out to forage at dusk, dawn or at night, when the desert is cooler.\n\n\nSemiarid Desert\nThe major deserts of this type include the sagebrush of Utah, Montana and Great Basin. They also include the Nearctic realm (North America, Newfoundland, Greenland, Russia, Europe and northern Asia).\nThe su
792584
U mean the Drakensburg Escarpment... which is NOT a desert... Therefore ur answer is...not the Sahara but the... Kalahari Woestyn(desert). btw, S.A doesnt really have a desert.
516952
Antarctica is a desert.  It is what is known as a cold desert, which is probably why you find that it is not classified along with hot deserts like the Sahara.  A hot desert is defined by geographers as a region where the rate of evaporation exceeds precipitation, and where precipitation is below 254 mm per year.  In a cold desert, by contrast, there is little evaporation, so low \nprecipitation alone determines its status as a desert.\n\nIn Antarctica precipitation is less in the interior of the continent than along the coasts.  The reason is that coastal areas are more open to the influence of cyclones.  In the interior of Antarctica precipitation is as low as 50 mm per year, while in coastal regions it can be as high as 250 \nmm per year.  Thus even coastal precipitation is usually within the range that we would consider to be a desert.  The entire continent is, therefore, a vast cold desert.  It is, larger than the Sahara (Antarctica is about 14.2 million square kilometers in size, and the Sahara is just over 9 million square kilometers).  \n\nAntarctica is clearly the largest desert on Earth.  The reason you do not often see it listed along with hot deserts \nis mainly just that people think of deserts as hot.
1039017
Over half the world is water.  Then there are the jungles deserts and the bush in Australia and the ice caps so put the towns and villages and cities together its not that much and then to go two stories that's half  it again so it's not a really big space.\n\nNot very accurate but it may give you some ideas.
565115
OK!\nCold deserts are at altitudes above the tree line on mountains and outside the Artic/Antartic Circles. Permafrost is the rule and so plants that grow must be ephemeral (short lived), mosses and lichens. \n\nSorry but I can't help more than taht>
7188
Actually, the earth isn't on a 35 degree tilt.  It is on a 23.5 degree tilt.
149040
<The Sahara is the world's second largest desert (second to Antarctica), over 9,000,000 km² (3,500,000 mi²), located in northern Africa and is 2.5 million years old. The entire land area of the United States of America would fit inside it. Its name, Sahara, is an English pronuciation of the word for desert in Arabic (صحراء ).\nOverview\nThe boundaries of the Sahara are the Atlantic Ocean on the west, the Atlas Mountains and the Mediterranean Sea on the north, the Red Sea and Egypt on the east, and the Sudan and the valley of the River Niger on the south. Sahara is divided into western Sahara, the central Ahaggar Mountains, the Tibesti massif, the AﲠMountains (a region of desert mountains and high plateaus), Tenere desert and the Libyan desert (the most arid region). The highest peak in the Sahara is Emi Koussi (3415 m) in the Tibesti Mountains in northern Chad.The Sahara divides the continent into North and Sub-Saharan Africa. The southern border of the Sahara is marked by a band of semiarid savanna called the Sahel; south of the Sahel lies the lusher Sudan.\nHumans have lived on the edge of the desert for almost 500,000 years. During the last ice age, the Sahara was a much wetter place, much like East Africa, than it is today. Over 30,000 petroglyphs of river animals such as crocodiles survive in total with half found in the Tassili n'Ajjer in southeast Algeria. Fossils of dinosaurs have also been found here. The modern Sahara, though, is generally devoid of vegetation, except in the Nile Valley and at a few oases and in some scattered mountains and has been this way since about 3000 BC.\n\n2.5 million people live in the Sahara, most of these in Mauritania, Morocco and Algeria. Dominant groups of people are the Tuareg-Berber, the Sahrawis, Moors, and different black African ethnicities including the Tubu, the Nubians, the Zaghawas and the Kanuri. The largest city is Nouakchott, Mauritania's capital. Other important cities are Tamanrasset, Algeria; Timbuktu, Mali; Agadez, Niger; Ghat, Libya; and Faya, Chad.
338705
The total surface are of the Earth is 510,065,284.702 km² or 51,006,528,500 hectares.  The land surface area is 148,939,063.133 km² or 14,893,906,300 hectares
252615
Depends on which desert.  I live in Albuquerque NM, which is in a desert.  We have a vast (but shrinking) reserve of water under the ground.\n\nAlso, the largest body of fresh water in the world, Lake Vostok in Antartica is burried under miles of ice in a desert area.
537767
Technically they do have soil. Just different kinds.\n\nSoil type is based mostly on texture & composition.\n\nSome deserts have loose sandy soil. Others have desert "pavement" which is essentially hard compacted soil.\n\nThere are 3 major types of soils under which all other subsoils fall. Pedocals are those soils found in the desert & other arid places. It is high in calcite b/c of lack of water filtering through the soil.\n\nThe other two are laterite which is found in humid tropical places that is high in iron oxide & pedalfers which are found in temperate climates. Like I said there are more but these are the main three types.
680824
About 5 million square kilometers are marked as agricultural, Europe is 9,938,000 sq km, so that makes about 50% of the total surface!
59337
Earth has a total surface area of 196,800,00 square miles. Approximately 57,300,00 square miles, or 29% of the total surface area is land. Water covers approximately 139,500,000 square miles, or 71% of the total surface area.
1087611
More than 70% .        Of the whole earth's surface 80% is water. \nIt's too bad, 97.2% of all the water on earth is salt water though. \nNow, where do you think most salt water is found? That only leaves 2.8% is fresh water that we can drink or play in.
914336
desert have become important......what is the question????