31 L4-All About Desert Life

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Oxford Read and Discover level 4 All About Desert Life by Julie Penn

Introduction There are many deserts on Earth. All deserts are dry, but they aren't all hot there are cold deserts, too. Millions of people, animals, and plants live in deserts. What deserts do you know? What do you know about deserts? What people, animals, and plants live in deserts? Discover! Now read and discover more about desert life around the world!

Chapter 1 What Is a Desert? A desert is a dry place that has less than 25 centimeters of rain every year. Some deserts have no rain for months or years. Some deserts have sand, but others have stones or rocks. Some deserts are in the mountains. In the day, temperatures in hot deserts are usually from 20 to 35 degrees centigrade, but temperatures can be more than 50 degrees. At night, the air gets very cold. Sometimes, it's less than 0 degrees. Most cold deserts are warm in summer, but they are very cold in winter. In summer, temperatures are usually from 21 to 26 degrees centigrade. In winter, they are usually from 2 to 4 degrees. Most of the water in cold deserts comes from snow or fog. It doesn't come from rain. Discover! It snows in Antarctica, but this only makes about 5 centimeters of water every year. It's the biggest and coldest desert on Earth.

Chapter 2 Different Deserts More than 20 percent (%) of the land on Earth is desert. There are many different deserts. The Sahara Desert, in North Africa, is the biggest hot desert on Earth. It's 9 million square kilometers that's about as big as the USA! The Sahara has sand dunes, rocks, and mountains. Some of the sand dunes are 180 meters tall. The Sahara has very strong winds that make big sandstorms. The sandstorms can take plants and animals into the air! The Atacama Desert is in Peru and Chile. It's not very hot, and it's one of the oldest and driest deserts on Earth. It has less than 1 millimeter of rain every year! Scientists think that at one time, it didn't rain here for 400 years. Discover! There aren't many deserts in Europe. There's one small desert in Spain. It's called the Tabernas Desert. The Gobi Desert is in Mongolia and China. It's 1,300,000 square kilometers and it's in the mountains. Most of the land is rock. It's one of the coldest deserts on Earth. In winter, the temperature can be minus 40 degrees centigrade!

Chapter 3 Plants Deserts are very dry places, but plants can still grow there. Desert plants collect and use water in special ways. The cactus has big roots, so it can collect water fast when it rains. It stores water in its stem for when there isn't any rain. Many cactus plants have spikes. The spikes also collect water, and they stop animals eating the plant. Discover! There are about 1,200 different types of plant in the Sahara Desert. The welwitschia plant gets water from fog. The leaves collect the water and it goes down into the soil. Then the plant takes up the water with its roots. The baobab tree grows in the deserts in Africa and Australia. It can store thousands of liters of water. Some baobab trees are more than 9 meters across! Desert people can drink the water from this tree. The seeds of many desert plants can stay in the soil for a long time. When it rains they grow fast and produce flowers. Then they die, but they leave seeds for the next time it rains.