IN THE DESERT
In the desert many kinds of the life although it is difficult to live in the desert for lack of the presence of water in the desert and the climate is very hot .
Conventional wisdom depicts the desert as almost devoid of vegetation or wildlife, save perhaps for a sidewinding snake or rearing scorpion. It is seen as abandoned by human beings.
Conventional wisdom depicts the desert as almost devoid of vegetation or wildlife, save perhaps for a sidewinding snake or rearing scorpion. It is seen as abandoned by human beings.
in fact provide a remarkably fertile habitat for plants, animals, and humans alike, each of which have found ingenious ways of making the best of the desert. Plants store water through months of drought or blossom and seed after rare rainfall in a matter of days, transforming bare landscape into dazzling fields of color. Animals live by night or burrow deep underground, or—as in the case of reptiles—are physiologically adapted to withstand the desert’s temperature extremes.
pictures Oases in the desert
Humans living in and on the fringes of deserts have developed unique lifestyles that usually feature nomadism—a fluid way of life that is able to adapt swiftly and creatively to the vicissitudes of this harsh environment. Some of the world’s earliest civilizations— including those of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia—formed on the margins of great deserts, where the strenuousness of life called for the utmost in human endeavor.
pictures Bedouins in the desert
The changing desert
Traditional nomadism is in most deserts a dying way of life. Colonialism, urban biased political structures, and modern lifestyles and technologies derived from the West have proved antipathetic to traditional peoples everywhere, and the peoples of the desert are no exception. In next image we shall see how the desert, like every other biome, is facing unprecedented challenges to its very survival. In the late 19th and 20th centuries many deserts were found to harbor important mineral reserves, most significantly oil and natural gas, and consequently were and continue to be subject to intensive exploitation. Perhaps more damaging still has been the ambition to “make the deserts bloom”—to irrigate formerly arid land, often by exploiting nearby rivers or the water table.
pictures oil in the desert
Today you find life in the desert of all kinds from animals and plants to humans , Where he built the human small villages to big cities and skyscrapers .
WEALTH IN THE DESERT
Deserts are treasure-houses of some of the earth’s most sought-after resources, including oil. Exploitation of such resources has often been bought at great environmental cost, however, and humankind is only now realizing the true value of the desert—as a precious natural habitat. Since ancient times deserts have been used as a source of metals and minerals. In ancient Egypt, for instance, gold was regularly extracted from the Western Desert and used lavishly in the creation of royal artefacts, such as those that adorned the tomb of Tutankhamen. The irrigation of semiarid desert fringes, too, is an age-old practice and was the basis of some of the world’s oldest civilizations .
However, it is only in the last hundred years or so that the development of new technologies and transportation infrastructures has enabled the wholesale exploitation of desert wealth, with the result that pristine wildernesses have been transformed into semi-industrialized landscapes of mines, oil wells, highways, and pipelines. Above all, it was the discovery of oil, especially in the Middle East, that began a new age in the history of the desert.
pictures Cities in the desert
Exploitation of desert areas has often been reckless. Because deserts are often perceived as “empty,” any degree of human intervention in the landscape has appeared justifiable. Mining, drilling, and irrigation have caused severe environmental damage in many arid areas. Moreover, as deserts have become sites of economic exploitation, they have also become subjects of political and military dispute. The Gulf War of the early 1990s was to a large degree an “oil war,” fought on all sides to preserve access and rights to what is an increasingly precious commodity.
As our knowledge of deserts has improved—both in terms of their place in the global environmental jigsaw and their value as ecological havens—a more balanced approach to their exploitation has begun to emerge. The development of solar-energy plants offers a model for such an approach, in which a renewable desert resource—in this case, sunlight—is exploited at minimal environmental cost. The preservation of Antarctica—known to be a potentially rich source of oil—under international law is another promising sign of changing attitudes to the desert.
Solar energy in the desert