The Sahara Desert
Sahara Desert
The Sahara Desert ecoregion, as defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature, includes the hyper-arid center of the Sahara, between 18° and 30° N. It is one of several desert and xeric shrubland ecoregions that cover the northern portion of the African continent.
How does the Sahara Desert affect Africa?
How does the Sahara desert affect Africa? In the world today, 1/6 of the population is being affected by desertification that is forcing people to relocate to other regions and change their lifestyles. For those unable to move away from deserts, such as residents of the Sahara and Sahel regions of northern Africa, the effects can be devastating.
How does desertification affect the world?
In the world today, 1/6 of the population is being affected by desertification that is forcing people to relocate to other regions and change their lifestyles. For those unable to move away from deserts, such as residents of the Sahara and Sahel regions of northern Africa, the effects can be devastating.
What is the Sahel and why is it important?
The Sahel is a region just south of the Sahara desert that extends from the east to the west coast of Africa. Not only is this region already environmentally degraded but the people living in it are poor. As the Sahara reaches into the region, desertification of the Sahel occurs, damaging the semi-arid ecosystem and destroying Africa’s farmland.
How to stop the encroachment of the Sahara Desert?
In order to stop the encroachment of the Sahara, experts have suggested the construction of a Green Wall or a wall of trees that stretches across the southern border of the Sahara from Senegal in the west to Djibouti on the east.
How does the Sahara desert affect Africa?
Today, the Sahara still serves as a border between the continent's black African south and Arab-influenced north. Its scorching heat and size still influence the cycle of drought and rainfall in sub-Saharan Africa.
How does the desert affect Africa?
Desertification in Senegal and Beyond Agriculture in Africa tends to result in low productivity, as most of the land is characterized as a semi-desert. Clearing the land of trees also reduces the structure of the soil. Coupled with wind erosion, the topsoil blows away and leaves a desert-like land.
Are there settlements in the Sahara desert?
Important cities located in the Sahara include Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania; Tamanrasset, Ouargla, Béchar, Hassi Messaoud, Ghardaïa, and El Oued in Algeria; Timbuktu in Mali; Agadez in Niger; Ghat in Libya; and Faya-Largeau in Chad.
How does the Sahara desert impact people's lives?
Some of the people who live in the Sahara raise crops on irrigated land in an oasis. Others tend flocks of goats, sheep, and camels. These herders find grass for the stock along the desert's fringe or where sudden rains have fallen. They live in tents so they can move easily as soon as the grass is eaten in one place.
What effects did desertification have on African peoples?
The degradation of drylands in Africa is forcing people who can no longer make a living off the land to move to urban areas. According to the UN Population Division, the population of Lagos, Nigeria, will grow from 13.4 million in 2000 to 23.2 million in 2015, partly due to an influx of displaced rural communities.
How has Africa been affected by desertification?
Africa has an estimated additional 132 million hectares of degraded cropland, which combined with climate change, makes millions more vulnerable. Around 45 percent of Africa's land is impacted by desertification, 55 per cent of which is at very high risk of further desertification.
Why is Sahara Desert important?
Trade routes across the Sahara Desert were an important part of the economies of Ancient Africa. Goods such as gold, salt, slaves, cloth, and ivory were transported across the desert using long trains of camels called caravans.
What is the Sahara desert famous for?
sand dune fieldsThe Sahara desert has a variety of land features, but it is most famous for the sand dune fields that are often depicted in movies. The dunes can reach almost 600 feet (183 meters) high, and they cover about 25% of the entire desert, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Which area of Sahara Desert supports settled population and how?
Answer: Desert is an arid region characterized by extremely high or low temperatures and has scarce vegetation. Question 6: Where can we find settled population in the Sahara desert region? Answer: The oasis in the Sahara and the Nile Valley in Egypt support settled life.
What are 3 interesting facts about the Sahara desert?
10 Facts About the Sahara DesertSaharan Dunes can reach 180 metres in height. ... Many dinosaur fossils have been found in the Sahara. ... Emi Koussi Volcano is the highest point in the Sahara at 3,415 metres. ... Monitor lizards, camels, foxes and gazelles live in the Sahara.
Why is it difficult to live in the Sahara desert?
Life in the Sahara Desert is very difficult due to its climate. It receives less than 3 inches of rain every year. It may rain twice in one week, to an extreme of no rainfall over the next three years. Oasis are scattered throughout this desert, however, because of its size, it’s not easy to trace.
Does the Sahara desert form a cultural barrier in Africa?
Covering most of Northern Africa, the Sahara is the largest hot desert in the world. For millennia, it has served as a nearly impenetrable barrier, dividing African peoples between the north and south.
What are the 3 main causes of desertification in Africa?
Poverty-related agricultural practices are a major contributor to desertification. Continuous cultivation without adding supplements, overgrazing, lack of soil and water conservation structures, and indiscriminate bushfires aggravate the process of desertification.
Why is Africa so much desert?
The rise in solar radiation amplified the African monsoon, a seasonal wind shift over the region caused by temperature differences between the land and ocean. The increased heat over the Sahara created a low pressure system that ushered moisture from the Atlantic Ocean into the barren desert.
What causes deserts in Africa?
These deserts exist, fundamentally, because they are so far inland that the moisture is gone by the time air masses reach them from the sea. Some of the desert regions in the hinterland of North America are also at least partially the result of this same effect.
What are the 5 effects of desertification?
CONSEQUENCES OF DESERTIFICATION The loss of vegetation cover and therefore of food for livestock and humans. Increased risk of zoonotic diseases, such as COVID-19. Loss of forest cover, with a corresponding shortage of wood resources. The decrease in drinking water reserves due to the loss of aquifers.
How did the Greening of the Sahara Desert affect early human migrations?
Greening of Sahara desert triggered early human migrations out of Africa. Scientists have determined that a major change in the climate of the Sahara and Sahel region of North Africa facilitated early human migrations from the African continent. Among the key findings are that the Sahara desert and the Sahel were considerably wetter around 9,000, ...
When was the Sahara Desert covered in grassland?
Nov. 30, 2016 — As little as 6,000 years ago, the vast Sahara Desert was covered in grassland that received plenty of rainfall, but shifts in the world's weather patterns abruptly transformed the vegetated region ...
What region of Africa facilitated early human migrations?
A team of scientists from the NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research and the University of Bremen (Germany) has determined that a major change in the climate of the Sahara and Sahel region of North Africa facilitated early human migrations from the African continent.
Why is the Sahara wet?
Changes in ocean circulation caused a wetter Sahara. The researchers also looked for the causes of these major climate shifts to much wetter conditions in the Sahara and found that they were indirectly related to an increase in the strength of the major current system, the Atlantic Overturning Circulation (AOC).
When did humans migrate to the Sahel?
During three discrete periods, ca. 120,000-110,000 years, 50,000- 45,000 and 10,000-8,000 years ago, substantially more trees grew in Sahara and the Sahel, indicating significantly wetter conditions than at present. The two oldest periods exactly coincide with times when the earliest humans were migrating out of East Africa to northern Africa, the Middle East, Asia and eventually Europe. At these times, the wetter conditions in central North Africa likely enabled humans to cross this normally inhospitable region, allowing them to migrate into other continents. When climate in the Sahara and Sahel turned dry again, humans were forced out of these areas causing genetic and cultural changes in already inhabited regions such as Northern Africa and the Middle East.
Where is dust found in marine sediment cores?
The researchers studied marine sediments covering nearly 200,000 years collected from the seafloor off the coast of Guinea in West Africa. Strong off-shore winds transport large volumes of dust from the Sahara and Sahel to the study area.
Where is dust deposited in Africa?
Jan. 2, 2019 — Researchers have analyzed dust deposited off the coast of west Africa over the last 240,000 years, and found that the Sahara, and North Africa in general, has swung between wet and dry climates every ...
What are the causes of desertification?
The CLIMBER-2 models showed that feedbacks within the climate and vegetation systems were the major cause of Saharan desertification, building rapidly upon the effects of the initial orbital changes. The model suggests that land use practices of humans who lived in and cultivated the Sahara, were not significant causes of the desertification. Further investigation is necessary, the researchers say, to determine more precisely the specific effects of latitude and oceanic feedback, as compared with biospheric feedback, on the timing of the event.
How long ago did the arid climate last?
The first, which was less severe, occurred between 6,700 and 5,500 years ago. The second, which was brutal, lasted from 4,000 to 3,600 years ago. Summer temperatures increased sharply, and precipitation decreased, according to carbon-14 dating. This event devastated ancient civilizations and their socio-economic systems.
Did the Earth's orbit change?
The changes in Earth's orbit occurred gradually, however, whereas the evolution of North Africa's climate and vegetation were abrupt. Claussen and his colleagues believe that various feedback mechanisms within Earth's climate system amplified and modified the effects touched off by the orbital changes. By modeling the impact of climate, oceans, and vegetation both separately and in various combinations, the researchers concluded that oceans played only a minor role in the Sahara's desertification.
What causes the expansion of the Sahara Desert into the Sahel?
Global climate change due to human activities and pollution causes the expansion southward of the Sahara Desert into the Sahel. The Sahel is a region just south of the Sahara desert that extends from the east to the west coast of Africa.
How to stop the encroachment of the Sahara?
In order to stop the encroachment of the Sahara, experts have suggested the construction of a Green Wall or a wall of trees that stretches across the south ern border of the Sahara from Senegal in the west to Djibouti on the east. Experts believe that a wall of tree not only operate as a windbreak to hold back the desert sands, ...
Is the Sahara desert degraded?
Not only is this region already environmentally degraded but the people living in it are poor. As the Sahara reaches into the region, desertification of the Sahel occurs, damaging the semi-arid ecosystem and destroying Africa's farmland. In order to stop the encroachment of the Sahara, experts have suggested the construction ...