The Geographical Splendour Of The Sahara Quiz

Answer: No

A definition of a desert is a barren landscape with very small precipitation activity making living conditions plant and animal life unfavourable. By this definition, the Antarctic and the Arctic are largest deserts in the world.

Characteristics of hot deserts include high temperatures year round, strong winds, lack of cloud cover and low humidity. Evaporation is greater than precipitation.

The Sahara desert is the largest hot desert in the world and the third largest overall. The name 'Sahara' is derived from ṣaḥārá which is the plural of the Arabic word for "desert" (many deserts).

Answer: Sudan

Africa contains three main deserts (though there are smaller deserts within each one of these): Sahara, Kalahari (Angola, Botswana, Namibia and South Africa) and the Namib (Angola and Namibia). The latter two are south of the equator (in what is termed Sub-Saharan Africa). The Kalahari is less than a tenth the size of the Sahara and the Namib is less than 1% of the area of Sahara.

Answer: China or USA

China and USA are both around 9.6 km sq. Australia is 7.7 million km sq. However, while the Sahara is as big as China or USA, the third and fourth largest countries respectively, even the Sahara is not as big as the Pacific Ocean being 1/20 the size of 162 million km sq.

Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Western Sahara, Sudan and Tunisia all have significant portions of their land area within the Sahara. It covers 31% of Africa and extends from from the Red Sea (east) and the Mediterranean (north) to the Atlantic Ocean (west) excluding some areas such as the Nile Valley, the Atlas Mountains and the fertile coastal strip along the Mediterranean Sea. The southern boundary is defined as the Sahel. This is a wide belt of semi-arid tropical savanna clustered around the Niger River valley and the Sudan/South Sudan border area.

Answer: Flat mountains (mesa)

Great movies like "The English Patient" (1996) depict the Sahara as an endless vista of undulating sand dunes (This is more typical of the Empty Quarter in Saudi Arabia). A hamada is a type of desert landscape comprising barren, hard, rocky plateaus, with very little sand because this has been removed by wind weathering. Finer-grained products are removed in suspension. Sand is removed through drift and surface creep. What remains is a landscape of gravel, boulders and rock.
Sand dunes are called ergs. These are only a small component of the Sahara but many are over 180 metres (590 ft) high.
Also featured are gravel plains (reg), dry valleys (wadi) and lakes (oued), and salt flats (shatt or chott) with oases being very rare. There are a few ragged mountain ranges and these influence weather.

Answer: A 40 kilometre elliptical dome created by volcanic activity

The Eye of the Storm or the Richat Structure is an eroded, elliptical dome of sedimentary rock. This structure curves outward at 10-20 degrees. Erosion of resistant layers of quartzite has created high-relief circular cuestas (hills with a gentle slope and a sharp slope on the other side).

The formation was thought to be caused by water 50 million years ago. Unlike the Great Wall of China, the Eye of the Sahara is actually visible from space which is how it was discovered.

Answer: Mauritania

Nouakchott (Berber - "place of the winds") is the capital of Mauritania. Until 1958 it was a small fishing village when it was chosen as the country's capital. Plans were drawn to enlarge the "city" to 150000 people but drought and increasing desertification since the 1970s in the rest of the country, has pushed the population above a million people in 2016.

The city is situated along the Atlantic coast. Ironically, there is no cityscape on the waterfront as it is a seasonal flood plain. Additionally there is no natural harbour so a massive artificial port was created, which, while it adds much needed infra-structure, it also contributed to the massive overgrowth.

It is by far the biggest city in the Sahara. Other cities in the region include Timbuktu in Mali; Agadez in Niger, Faya-Largeau in Chad, Ghat in Libya and the Algerian cities of Tamanrasset, Ouargla, Béchar, Hassi Messaoud, Ghardaïa, and El Oued.

Answer: True

There is a town called Ain Sefra, which despite being located in the Sahara, has had three snowfalls. This is partly because of its elevation of 1081 m or 3547 ft.
This is not typical of the climate in the Sahara. The Sahara is located in the horse latitudes (30-38 degrees N) under the subtropical ridge, a band of "semi-permanent subtropical warm-core high pressure" In this band, the air from upper levels of the troposphere tends to sink towards the ground which prevents evaporating water from rising, in turn preventing cross- cooling, which makes cloud formation very rare. This in turn allows maximum light and thermal radiation. This atmospheric prevents rainfall which is very rare.

Most of the Sahara exceeds 3500 hours of sunshine per year. This equates to 300 days of sunshine at 12 hours a day. Parts of upper Egypt exceed 4300 hours per year. The Sahara has a huge potential for solar energy production.

Answer: Hippopotamus

Foxes such as the fennec fox, pale fox and Ruppell's fox have all adapted to the harshness of the Sahara as have gazelles such as dorcas gazelle, rhim gazelle and dama gazelle and a close relative: the addax. There are two different types of cheetah living in the Sahara. The Saharan cheetah lives in the western part of the desert whereas northeast African cheetah is a distinct sub-species. Both are found in very low numbers and are endangered.

The flora of central Sahara such as palms, acacia trees, succulents, and grasses demonstrate adaptation to the hostile conditions, by growing close to the ground to avoid water loss from winds by storing water in stems to use it when dry, by having long roots that travel horizontally to reach the maximum surface moisture, and by having small thick leaves or needles to prevent water loss by evaporation.

Answer: Many petroglyphs of river animals such of crocodiles have been found in the Sahara

Petroglyphs are rock carvings. Most of the these in southern Algeria (over 1000km from the coast) depict crocodiles and other aquatic animals. Over 15000 of these are known to exist. It is thought the shifts in the earth's axis around 1600BC increased temperatures and desertification. If this theory is true (and there is doubt), then the Sahara may only be 5400 years young.

Answer: Germany

The French claimed most of the Sahara region including most of West Africa, the exception being the area which became known as Western Sahara. The British claimed Egypt then moved west and claimed the Sudan and established Khartoum in 1823. Italy wrested part of Libya from the Ottoman Empire. In the mid-20th century, the reverse occurred when independent nations arose from the Sahara: Egypt and Libya became independent in 1936 and 1951 respectively; Morocco, Sudan, and Tunisia in 1956; Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger in 1960; and Algeria in 1962. Spain left Western Sahara in 1975, which was divided between Morocco and Mauritania with Morocco claiming all of it in 1979.