DESERT

BY MD. RIZWAN AHMED

• A desert is a barren area of landscape where little precipitation occurs and, consequently, living
conditions are hostile for plant and animal life. The lack of vegetation exposes the unprotected surface
of the ground to the processes of denudation. About one-third of the land surface of the world is arid
or semi-arid.
• This includes much of the Polar Regions, where little precipitation occurs, and which are sometimes
called polar deserts or “cold deserts”. Deserts can be classified by the amount of precipitation that
falls, by the temperature that prevails, by the causes of desertification, or by their geographical
location.

• About 1/5 of the world’s land is made up of deserts.

• Deserts that are absolutely barren, where nothing grows are known as true deserts.
• Insufficient & irregular rainfall, high temperature & rapid rate of evaporation are the main causes of
the desert’s aridity.
• Almost all the deserts are confined within 15 degree – 30 degree parallels to N-S of the equator known
as trade wind deserts or tropical deserts.
• They lie in the trade wind belt on the western parts of the continents.
• Offshore trade winds are often bathed in cold currents which produces a desiccating (dehydrating)
effect hence, moisture is not easily condensed into precipitation.

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 Types of Deserts
• Hamada/Rocky Desert
➢ Consist of large stretches of bare rocks, swept clear of sand & dust by wind.
➢ Exposed rocks are thoroughly smoothened, polished & highly sterile
• Reg/Stony Desert
➢ Composed of extensive sheets of angular pebbles & gravels which the wind is not able to blow
off.
➢ Stony deserts are more accessible than sandy deserts & large herds of camels kept there.
• Erg/Sandy Desert
➢ Also known as the sea of sand
➢ Winds deposit vast stretches of undulating sand dunes in the direction of winds
• Mountain Deserts
➢ Deserts which are found on the highlands such as on plateaus & mountain ranges, where
erosion has dissected the desert highland into rough chaotic peaks & uneven ranges.
➢ Their steep slopes consist of Wadis (dry valleys) with sharp & irregular edges carved due to
the action of frost.

1. ROCKY DESERT 2. STONY DESERT

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 3. MOUNTAIN DESERT 4.
SANDY DESERT

5. BADLANDS

Mechanism of Desert/Arid Erosion

• Weathering
Most potent factor in reducing rocks to sand in arid regions.
Even though the amount of rain that falls in a desert is small, but manages to penetrate into
rocks & sets up chemical reactions in various minerals it contains.
Intense heating during the day & rapid cooling during the night by radiations, set up stresses in
already weakened rocks, hence they eventually crack.
When water gets into cracks of a rock, it freezes at night as the temperature drops below the
freezing point & expands by 10 % of its volume.
Successive freezing will prise of
fragments of rocks which get
accumulated as screes.
As heat penetrates rock, its outer surface
gets heated & expands, leaving its inner surface
comparatively cool.
Hence, outer surface prise itself from the inner
surface & peels o

• Action of Wind
• Efficient in arid regions as little vegetation or
moisture to bind the loose surface materials.
• It is carried out in the following ways:
• Deflation

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 ❖ Involves lifting & blowing away of loose materials from the ground.
❖ Blowing capacity depending largely on the size of the material lifted from the
surface.
❖ Finer dust & sands may be removed miles away from their place of origin &
may get deposited even outside the desert margins.
❖ Deflation results in the lowering of the land surface to form large depressions
called Deflation hollows.

• Abrasion
❖ Sandblasting of rock surfaces by the wind when they hurl sand particles against
them. (When wind loaded with sand grains erodes the rock by grinding against
its walls is called abrasion or sandblasting)
❖ This results in rock surfaces being scratched, polished & worn away.
❖ Abrasion is most effective near the base of the rocks, where the amount of
material the wind is able to carry is greatest.
❖ This explains why telegraphic poles in the deserts are protected by covering of
metal for a foot or two above the ground.

• Attrition
❖ When wind-borne particles roll against one another in the collision, they wear
each other away. (Wear and tear of sand particles while they are being
transported)
❖ Hence their sizes are greatly reduced & grains are rounded into millet seed sand.

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 Arid Landforms
✓ Wind Eroded Arid Landforms.
✓ Depositional Arid Landforms.
✓ Water Eroded Arid Landforms.

Wind Eroded Arid Landforms

• Rock pedestals/Mushroom rocks
• A mushroom rock, also called rock pedestal or a pedestal rock, is a naturally occurring rock
whose shape, as its name implies, resembles a mushroom.
• Formed by the sandblasting effect of winds against any projecting rock masses.
• It wears down the softer layer leading to the formation of irregular edges on alternate bands of
softer & harder rocks.
• Grooves & hollows cut in the rock surfaces, carve them into grotesque-looking pillars known
as rock pedestals.

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 • Such rock pillars will be further eroded near their bases where friction is greatest.
• This process of undercutting produces rocks of mushroom shape called mushroom rocks.

• Messa and Butte

▪ Mesa is a Spanish word meaning ‘table’. It is a flat, table-like landmass with a very resistant
horizontal top layer and very steep sides. The hard stratum on the surface resists denudation by
both wind and water, and thus protects the underlying layers of rocks from being eroded away.
▪ Mesas may be formed in canyon regions e.g. Arizona, or on fault blocks e.g. the Table Mountain
of Cape Town, South Africa. Continued denudation through the ages may reduce mesas in the
area so that they become isolated flat-topped hills called buttes.

• Zeugen
❖ Tabular masses which have a layer of soft rocks lying beneath a surface layer of more resistant
rocks. (A table-shaped area of rock found in arid and semi-arid areas formed when more
resistant rock is reduced at a slower rate than softer rocks around it).
❖ Difference in the erosional effect of the wind on soft & resistant rock surfaces, carve them into
weird looking ridge & furrow landscape.
❖ Mechanical weathering initiates their formation by opening up joints of the surface rocks.
❖ Wind abrasion further eats into the underlying softer layer so that deep furrows are developed.
❖ The hard rock then stands above the furrows as ridges or Zeugen.
❖ Zeugen may stand 10 to 100 feet above the sunken furrows.
❖ Continuous abrasion by winds gradually lowers the Zeugen & widens the furrow.

• Yardangs
• Yardangs looks quite similar to Zeugen but instead of lying on horizontal strata
upon one another, the hard & soft rocks of Yardangs are vertical bands.
• Rocks are aligned in the direction of prevailing winds.
• Winds abrasion excavates the bands of softer rocks into long, narrow corridors,
separating the steep-sided over handing ridges of hard rock called Yardangs.

• Inselberg (Island Mountain)

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 • A monadnock or inselberg is an isolated hill, knob, rigid, outcrop, or small mountain that rises
abruptly from a gently sloping or virtually level surrounding plain.
• Characterized by very steep slopes &
rather rounded tops.
• They are often composed of granite
or gneiss.
• Are probably relics of an original
plateau, which has been almost
entirely eroded away.

• Ventifacts & Dreikanter

• These are pebbles faceted by sand-

blasting. They are shaped and

thoroughly polished by wind
abrasion to shapes resembling Brazil
nuts. Rock fragments, mechanically weathered from mountains and upstanding rocks, are
moved by wind and smoothed on the windward side.
• If the wind direction changes another facet is developed. Such rocks have characteristic flat
facets with sharp edges.
• Amongst the ventifacts those with three wind-faceted surfaces are called dreikanter. These
wind-faceted pebbles form the desert pavement a smooth, mosaic-like region, closely covered
by the numerous rock fragments and pebbles.

• Deflation Hollows
• Winds lower the ground by blowing away the
unconsolidated materials, and small depressions may form. Similarly, minor faulting can also
initiate depressions and the eddying action of on-coming winds will wear off the weaker rocks
until the water table is reached.
• Water then seeps out forming oasis or swamps, in the deflation hollows or depressions.
• Large areas in the western U.S.A., stripped of their natural vegetation for farming, were
completely deflated when strong winds, moved materials as dust storms, laying waste crops
and creating what is now known as the Great Dust Bowl.

Depositional Arid Landforms

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 Materials eroded & transported by winds must come to rest somewhere.
The finest dust travels enormous distances in the air sometimes as long as 2300 miles before
they settle down.
The dust from Sahara Desert is sometimes blown across the Mediterranean to fall as blood
rains in Italy or on the glaciers of Switzerland.
Dust that settles in Hwang Ho basin (also known as Hwangtu – the yellow earth) from the Gobi
Desert has been accumulated over past centuries to a depth of several hundred feet
As wind borne materials are shifted according to their coarseness, it can be expected that the
coarser sands will be too heavy to be blown out of desert limits.
They remain as dunes or other depositional landforms within desert themselves.

Dunes
➢ Dunes are, in fact, hills of sand formed by the accumulation of sand and shaped by the movement
of winds.
➢ They may be active or live dunes, constantly on the move, or inactive fixed dunes, rooted with
vegetation.
➢ Dunes are most well represented in the erg desert where a sea of sand is being continuously moved,
reshaped, and re-deposited into a variety of features.
➢ Generally, their heights vary from a few meters to 20 meters but in some cases dunes are several
hundred metres high and 5 to 6 km long.
➢ Two most common types of dunes are Barchan & Seifs.

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➢ Barchan:
➢ These are crescentic or moon-shaped dunes that occur individually or in groups. They are live
dunes that advance steadily before winds that come from a particular prevailing direction. They
are most prevalent in the deserts of Turkestan and in the Sahara.
➢ Barchans are initiated probably by a chance accumulation of sand at an obstacle, such as a
patch of grass or a heap of rocks. They occur transversely to the wind, so that their horns thin
out and become lower in the direction of the wind due to the reduced frictional retardation of
the winds around the edges.
➢ The windward side is convex and gently sloping while the leeward side, being sheltered, is
concave and steeps (the slip-face).
➢ The crest of the sand dune moves forward as more sand is accumulated by the prevailing wind.
➢ The sand is driven up the windward side and, on reaching the crest, slips down the leeward side
so that the dune advances.
➢ The migration of the barchans may be a threat to desert life for they may encroach on an oasis
burying palm trees or houses.
➢ Long-rooted sand-holding trees and grasses are therefore planted to halt the advance of the
dunes thus preventing areas of fertile land from being devastated.
➢ Under the action of winds, barchans take a chaotic changing pattern. Several barchans may
coalesce into a line of irregular ridges, ever-changing with the direction of the winds. Ergs or
sandy deserts are thus most difficult to cross.

• Seifs or Longitudinal Dunes:

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 • They are long, narrow ridges of sand, often over a hundred miles long lying parallel to the
direction of the prevailing winds. The Crestline of the seif rises and falls in alternate peaks and
saddles in regular successions like the teeth of a monstrous saw.
• The dominant winds blow straight along the
corridor between the lines of dunes so that they
are swept clear of sand and remain smooth. The
eddies that are set up blow towards the sides of
the corridor, and, having less power, drop the
sand to form the dunes.
• In this manner, the prevailing winds increase the
length of the dunes into tapering linear ridges
while the occasional crosswinds tend to increase
their height and width. Extensive seif dunes are
found in the Sahara Desert, south of the Qattara Depression; e.g. the Thar Desert and the West
Australian Desert.

Transverse Dunes:

Dunes deposited perpendicular (transverse) to the prevailing wind direction.

Parabolic Dunes:

They are U-shaped and are much longer and narrow than barchans.

Star Dunes:

Have a high central peak, radically extending three or more arms.

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Loess
• The fine dust blown beyond the desert limits is deposited on neighbouring lands as loess. It is a yellow,
friable material and is usually very fertile. Loess is in fact, fine loam, rich in lime, very coherent, and
extremely porous. Water sinks in readily so that the surface is always dry. (In some parts of the world,
windblown dust and silt blanket the land. This layer of fine, mineral-rich materials is called
loess).
• Streams have cut deep valleys through the thick mantle of soft loess and Badland topography may
develop. It is so soft that roads constructed through a loess region soon sink and their walls rise steeply.
The most extensive deposit of loess is found in northwest China in the loess plateau of the Hwang- Ho
basin.
• It is estimated to cover an area of 250,000 square miles, and the deposits have accumulated to a depth
of 200 to 500 feet! In China, such yellowish wind-borne dust from the Gobi Desert is called ‘Hwangtu’
— the yellow earth! But the original tern loess actually comes from a village in Alsace, France bearing
that name, where such deposits occurred.
• Similar deposits also occur in some parts of Germany France and Belgium and are locally called Limon
They are also wind-borne but were blown from material deposited at the edge of ice sheets during the
Ice Ages. In parts of the Mid-West, U.S.A. loess was derived from the ice sheets which covered
northern North America and is termed adobe.
• The thickest loess deposits are near the Missouri River in the U.S. state of lowa.
• Loess often develops into extremely fertile agricultural soil. It is full of minerals and drains water very
well. It is easily tilled, or broken up, for planting seeds.

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 Water Eroded Arid Landforms
➢ Few deserts in the world are entire without rain or water. The annual precipitation may be small and
comes in irregular showers. But thunderstorms do occur and the rain falls in torrential downpours,
producing devastating effects.
➢ A single rainstorm may bring several inches of rain within a few hours, drowning people who camp in
dry desert streams and flooding mud-baked houses in the oasis.
➢ As deserts have little vegetation to protect the surface soil, large quantities of rock wastes are
transported in the sudden raging torrents or flash-floods. Loose gravels, sand, and fine dusts are swept
down the hillsides.
➢ They cut deep gullies and ravines forming bad-land topography. Subsequent downpours widen and
deepen the gullies when they wash down more soft rocks from the surface. There is so much material
in the flash floods that the flow becomes liquid mud.
➢ When the masses of debris are deposited at the foot of the hill or the mouth of the valley, an alluvial
cone or fan or ‘dry delta’ is formed, over which the temporary stream discharges through several
channels, depositing more material.
➢ The pasty alluvial deposits are subjected to rapid evaporation by the hot sun and downward percolation
of water into the porous ground, and soon dry up leaving mounds of debris. Apart from gullies there
are many larger dry channels or valleys.

BOLSONS – The intermontane basins in dry regions are generally known as Bolsons.

➢ Temporary lakes (Playas):

➢ Also known as Playas or Salina.
➢ Three unique landforms viz. pediments,
bajadas, and playas are typically found in
bolsons.
➢ Small streams flow into bolsons, where
water is accumulated. These temporary
lakes are called Playas.
➢ Formed in arid or semi-arid areas by intermittent
streams flowing into depressions.
➢ Contain high percentage of salts due to high
evaporation & lower precipitation.
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 ➢ The playa plain covered up by salts is called alkali flats/After the evaporation of water, salt-
covered playas are called Salinas.

• Bajada & Pediment: The floor of the desert

depression is made up of two features viz. Bajada &
Pediment.
• Bajada
• Depositional feature made up of
alluvial material lay down by
intermittent streams.
• Bajada is formed by the coalescence of
alluvial fans.
• These fan-shaped deposits form from
the deposition of sediment by a stream from upland region onto flat land at the base of
a mountain.
• Bajadas are common in arid areas where a large quantity of sediment is deposited by
flash floods. (Bajadas are moderately sloping depositional plains located between
pediments and playas).
• Bajadas frequently contain playa lakes.

• Pediment
• An erosional plain formed at the base of the surrounding mountain scarps -steep slope.
• They are gently inclined rocky floors close to the mountains at their foot with or without
a thin cover of debris.
• They form through the erosion of mountain front through a combination of lateral
erosion by streams and sheet flooding.
• Through parallel retreat of slopes, the pediments extend backwards at the expense of
mountain front
• Gradually, the mountain gets reduced leaving an inselberg which is a remnant of the
mountain.
• That’s how the high relief in desert areas is reduced to low featureless plains called
Pedi-plains.

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• Badlands
➢ Consists of gully & ravines formed on hill slopes & rock surfaces by the extent of water action
➢ In arid regions occasional rainstorms produce numerous rills and channels which extensively
erode weak sedimentary formation.
➢ Ravines and gullies are developed by linear fluvial erosion leading to the formation of Badlands
topography.
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 ➢ Not fit for agriculture & survival.
➢ Finally leads to the abandonment of the entire region by its inhabitant.
➢ Example: Chambal Ravines.

• Alluvium fans
Alluvium fans are cone shaped heaps of sand that are deposited on the exit of a wadi or valley.
A wadi is a narrow dry valley with ephemeral water flow (water that flows during heavy rains
only). The valley is dry and baked most of the time, but during heavy downpours they can fill
up with water and transport all the alluvium from the upslope as sheet wash.
This alluvium is deposited as the wadi terminates into an open space. Energy is dissipated in
the open space and material spreads apart into a fan shape.

• Canyons/Gorges
Gorges (canyons in America) are deep narrow valleys that are excavated and eroded vertically
by rivers that flow along deserts.
The Grand Canyon in Arizona USA was formed by vertical erosion of sedimentary strata by
the Colorado River for millions of years.

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1. CANYONS 2. GORGES

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