Largest Deserts in the World

There are largest deserts in the world. A desert is a landscape

or region that receives an extremely low amount of precipitation, less than enough to support growth of most plants. Deserts can also be described as areas where more water is lost by evapotranspiration

than falls as precipitation.

Chihuahuan Desert, Mexico

The Chihuahuan Desert is a largest deserts that straddles the U.S.-Mexico border in the central and northern portions of the Mexican Plateau, bordered on the west by the extensive Sierra Madre Occidental range, and overlaying northern portions of the east range, the Sierra Madre Oriental. This largest deserts has an area of about 140,000 square miles. It is the third largest desert of the Western Hemisphere and is second largest in North America, after the Great Basin Desert.

Great Basin Desert, USA

The basin extends into Mexico and covers most of Nevada and over half of Utah, as well as parts of California, Idaho, Oregon and Wyoming. The majority of the watershed is in the North American Desert ecoregion, but includes areas of the Forested Mountain and Mediterranean California ecoregions. The Great Basin includes several metropolitan areas and Shoshone  Great Basin tribes.

Great Victoria Desert, Australia

The Great Victoria Desert is a barren, arid, and sparsely populated desert  ecoregion  in southern Australia. It falls inside the states of South Australia and Western Australia and consists of many small sandhills, grasslands  and salt lakes. It is over 700 kilometres (430 mi) wide (from west to east) and covers an area of 424,400 square kilometres (163,900 sq mi).

Patagonia Desert, Argentina

The Patagonian Desert, also known as the Patagonia Desert or the Patagonian Steppe, is the largest desert in America and is the 7th largest desert in the world by area, occupying 260,000 square miles (673,000 km). It is located primarily in Argentina with small parts in Chile and is bounded by the Andes, to its west, and the Atlantic Ocean to its east, in the region of Patagonia, southern Argentina.

 Kalahari Desert, Southern Africa

The Kalahari Desert is a large arid to semi-arid sandy area in Southern Africa extending 900,000 square kilometers (350,000 sq), covering much of Botswana  and parts of Namibia and South Africa, as semi-desert, with huge tracts of excellent grazing after good rains. The Kalahari Desert is the southern part of Africa, and the geography is a portion of desert and a plateau. The Kalahari supports some animals and plants because most of it is not a true desert.

Gobi Desert, Mongolia / N.E China

This largest deserts covers parts of northern and northwestern China, and of southern Mongolia. The desert basins of the Gobi are bounded by the Altai Mountains and the grasslands and steppes of Mongolia on the north, by the Hexi Corridor and Tibetan Plateau to the southwest, and by the North China Plain to the southeast. he Gobi is most notable in history as part of the great Mongol Empire, and as the location of several important cities along the Silk Road.

Arabian Desert, peninsula

Arabian Desert or Eastern Desert, c.86,000 sq mi (222,740 sq km), E Egypt, bordered by the Nile valley in the west and the Red Sea and the Gulf of Suez in the east. It extends along most of Egypt’s eastern border and merges into the Nubian Desert in the south. The Arabian Desert is sparsely populated; most of its inhabitants are based around wells and springs.

Sahara Desert, North Africa

The Sahara is the world’s largest deserts. At over 9,000,000 square kilometers (3,500,000 sq mi), it covers most of Northern Africa, making it almost as large as the United States or the continent of Europe. The desert stretches from the Red Sea, including parts of the Mediterranean coasts, to the outskirts of the Atlantic Ocean. To the south, it is delimited by the Sahel: a belt of semi-arid tropical savanna that comprises the northern region of central and western Sub-Saharan Africa.

Largest Deserts The Arctic

The Arctic is a polar region located at the northern-most part of the Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean and parts of Canada,Russia, Greenland, the United States, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland. The Arctic region consists of a vast, ice-covered ocean, surrounded by treelesspermafrost. The area can be defined as north of the Arctic Circle (66° 33′N), the approximate limit of the midnight sun and the polar night.

Largest Deserts Antarctica

Antarctica is Earth’s southernmost continent, containing the geographic South Pole. It is situated in theAntarctic region of the Southern Hemisphere, almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle, and is surrounded by the Southern Ocean. At 14.0 million km2 (5.4 million sq mi), it is the fifth-largest continent in area after Asia, Africa, North America, and South America. For comparison, Antarctica is nearly twice the size of Australia. About 98% of Antarctica is covered by ice that averages at least 1 mile (1.6 km) in thickness. Antarctica is the largest deserts in the world.

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