Sahara and the Okanagan

1. Sahara and the Okanagan By Oliver Collett

2. Desert animal adaptations • All the animals in the desert have adapted somehow. One of the main problems with living in the desert is the heat so a special variety of fox has developed big ears so it can keep itself in the shade and cool but other animals have resulted to becoming nocturnal hiding in burrows until the sun relents. One of the main problem for plants in the desert is how they are going to find a moist environment for their seeds. One type of cactus has adapted to solve this by coating the seeds in a protein substance so when they drop to the ground ants and birds come and eat them depositing the seeds in their waste. Plants have also adapted to the lack of water by growing their roots close to the surface so when it rains the sand absorbs the water and immediately deposits the water into the surface lying roots. For the insects that live in these places it is difficult for the eggs to be laid in a moist environment so some have developed the ability to lay the eggs inside spiders so the babies have a regular food supply.

3. Climate part 1 • The climate of deserts around the world are all different but one classification is the BWH the deserts in this category are found in low latitudes. In these deserts the temperatures every month are 64 degrees and are hot and dry. A dry desert climate is caused when cold air descends towards the ground and before it can turn to rain the heat from the ground evaporates the water. Because of this only 1 inch of water falls annually. The range in which they exist it 15 to 28 degrees North of the equator. The Sahara is in that range.

4. Climate part 2 • Coastal deserts are usually close to the ocean and although they are near the coast they receive very little precipitation and the ground is full of salt because of the ocean. In places like these the winters are usually cold and short while the summers are long and warm. There is a unusual amount of rain that falls in these types of deserts but because the sand and soil are so porous the water seeps in before animals can reach it. The winters are so cold that occasionally snow will fall the winters are comparable to the dry deserts night which are so cold because the desert has no may to retain heat other than rocks that line the ground

5. Climate part 3 • Arid desert are usually found in countries like North America and South East Asia. In places like this the water that falls usually evaporates before it gets near the ground. In places like this the ground is coarse or rocky and the rainfall is distributed throughout the year evenly. Because of the extreme heat and lack of water the animals that live there adapted a nocturnal lifestyle hiding in the shade. Sometimes in places like these you get one shower that gives the occasional burst of life. Or in some the evaporation rate exceeds the precipitation meaning that it loses more water than it gains.

6. Climate part 4 • Cold deserts are usually found in Antarctica, Greenland and Iceland. They are classified to have short and cold summers. The winters mean temperature is usually 2 to 4 degrees and the summer temperature is 21 to 26 degrees. The winters in these climate receive a lot of snow during the winter and the precipitation annually is 46 cm in the maximum and the heaviest rainfall is usually in April. The plants in this area are scattered and around ten percent of the ground is covered in shrubbery. These types of desert have the widest variety of plant heights the minimum being 15 cm to over a metre. The ground in these areas are porous and the majority of the salt in the ground gets washed away.

7. Survival challenges • The most common difficulty when you think of a desert is the heat however the environment changes dramatically by night and during the night it is so cold that it is possible to develop hypothermia and die of the cold. But when dealing with the issue of heat certain difficulties are obvious first you're sweat will dry up and stop you from cooling down and that develops into dehydration. Also another survival challenge is the desert is home to hundreds of different kinds of animals which have adapted to become extremely poisonous to catch prey and because of the heat you need to find shady places to cool down but the snakes and spiders look for those as well and when threatened bite or strike injecting a lethal dose of poison. The last survival challenge would be the lack of food. The only large animals that live in the desert are camels and they don’t stay forever. So you would have to result to catching snakes and lizards to receive the calories that you need every day. This can be a challenge because most of the animals are fast and are camaflouged so they are hard to find making you starve to death.

8. Obstacles • There is an obvious reason why it is difficult to explore the desert. That reason is the sand. Sand can get into the little cracks and crevices of machines and cause them to have major malfunctions. Also the heat can wear out the explorers that are deposited there quicker than anything they have experienced before. The ground itself is a very difficult challenge because the sand constantly moving and will cause anything with an enormous amount of weight to sink into the sand and get stuck an example of such an object would be a jeep. Also the sand forms itself into huge dunes which even some of the desert inhabitants have trouble getting over themselves. The last challenge to exploration will be the cold because any human explorers would experience an extreme cold similar to being on top of an mountain giving them frostbite. And if all of those factors weren’t enough you would be dangerously deprived from salt. Causing you to collapse from exhaustion.

9. Importance • It is important to explore this extreme environment because the wildlife their has poison that can be used to cure snake bite victims and the Sahara desert is the closet thing on Earth to exploring Mars. Another personal reason is that the deserts are spreading and villages that didn’t need to worry about survival might need to and I think that it would be beneficial to find out what adaptations it takes to survive so that people are ready when the deserts reach them.

10. Canadian deserts • Bc has Canada's only true desert the Okanagan. It contains all the elements of a true desert meaning that it has cacti and tarantulas. It is home to multiple resorts and is located near the city of Osoyoos. It has a lake in the middle and others jet skiing. In a way it is not really a remote desert because it contains a large body of water but is inhabited by thousands of people and tourists. One of the problems with this is the trash from the tourists are polluting the lakes and killing the wildlife. Also in a global scale it is diminishing the amount of wildlife left in Canada which will eventually turn the country into a place like England where it is all colonized.

11. Human interference • Some of the deserts in the world have avoided human interference for years such as the Sahara but ones in North America such as the Okanagan have been turned into tourist attractions. One of the problems with this is the trash from the tourists are polluting the lakes and killing the wildlife. Also it wrecks the surrounding area by digging giant holes in the landscape for hotels and houses. It hurts the wildlife by getting rid of the areas that receive the most water and takes the ideal spots away from the plants so they can’t receive enough water.

12. Technology used to explore deserts • The rat suit is a special type of spacesuit used to explore deserts. And just like Mars a rover and satellite are used to take pictures and get a view of the land. These equipment are really used to explore outer space but can be assigned to investigate deserts. The program called desert rats was used as a testing procedure for space equipment but is surprisingly useful in the sense it can keep the heat away and also the rovers can’t get stuck in the sand. These are the high tech inventions for exploring the desert but locals usually use silk or special types of clothing to explore. An example of these primitive inventions is the head wrap made out of light material to keep the sun of your head and the wrap also provides a slit for your eyes so the sun and sand doesn’t blind you.

13. Canadian inventions • Canada has made little contribution to the exploration of dry deserts but the snowmobile is a great example on how Canada has been inventing transportation for exploring artic deserts.

14. Desert explorers • Heinrich Barth was a famous Geologist born in February 16th 1821 he attended the University of Berlin and was fluent in English, French, Italian, Arabic and Spanish. In 1850 he embarked on a journey through the Sahara to Southern Sudan. He spent most of his life exploring the Sahara collecting information on the slave trade and documenting the customs of local tribes. One of his more famous expeditions was his trip to lake chad from 1822 to 1852. However the trip didn’t go well and the team of three explorers split up agreeing to meet up at lake Chad. Unfortunately Barth’s two companions didn’t survive one contracting tropical fever and the other Malaria. Barth himself contracted a disease and after three years in Africa decided to travel to Timbuktu after realizing it would take another two years to reach his destination. In 1854 Barth heard that a group of Europeans was searching for him and decided to go to lake chad to meet up with them. He found out he was declared dead and after finding the party traveled back across the Sahara to his home in England after five years. Publishing his discoveries of 40 native African languages in five journals. In his travels he discovered fragments of the history of Sudan and also created maps and writings about the history about the Bornu and wrote about the decline of the famous Fulani empire and took records of languages, trading patterns and the social structure of the African kingdoms.

15. How can humans live there responsibly • Humans can live in the desert responsibly by not making any permanent homes. An example of this would be nomads that live in the Sahara, they make mud houses so If they have to move on the houses will eventually collapse and leave no foreign material behind. Also you can collect herds of animals instead of killing the local population. A problem with this is they have to eat vegetation to survive but this is not such a problem because the nomads are constantly on the more minimizing the impact that they can have in one area. One of the major effects that people are having Sahara are the oil rigs that are being set up to suck reservoirs of oil out from under the sand and militaries all over the world use deserts for training exercises because they are remote and scarcely populated and the shells and ammunition casings will be left behind polluting the environment.