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Location Some major deserts can be found in North America; namely the Sonoran, Chihuahua, Mojave, and the Great Basin. Other deserts, which can be found in Australia, are the Great Victoria and the Great Sandy. South America has deserts in Patagonia and Argentina. The Atacama region can also be found in South America. Most of the Arabian Peninsula is covered in desert. This massive desert extends northward into Syria. The Negev desert of Israel is also considered a part of this desert. Deserts also cover large areas in Africa. In fact, the Sahara, which is the largest desert in the world, covers 3.5 million square miles (9 million square kilometers), almost a quarter of the entire northern portion of Africa. Other African deserts include the Kalahari of Southwestern Africa, and the Danakil of Ethiopia.
Characteristics Deserts cover about one fifth of the Earth's surface and occur where rainfall is less than 50 cm/year. Although most deserts, such as the Sahara of North Africa and the deserts of the southwestern U.S., Mexico, and Australia, occur at low latitudes, another kind of desert, cold deserts, occur in the basin and range area of Utah and Nevada and in parts of western Asia. Most deserts have a considerable amount of specialized vegetation, as well as specialized vertebrate and invertebrate animals. Soils often have abundant nutrients because they need only water to become very productive and have little or no organic matter. Disturbances are common in the form of occasional fires or cold weather, and sudden, infrequent, but intense rains that cause flooding. There are relatively few large mammals in deserts because most are not capable of storing sufficient water and withstanding the heat. Deserts often provide little shelter from the sun for large animals. The dominant animals of warm deserts are nonmammalian vertebrates, such as reptiles. Mammals are usually small, like the kangaroo mice of North American deserts
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