...Although growing most flowers involves careful tending and preparation, requiring a delicate combination of water, food and sunlight to survive - some flowers amazingly grow in the desert. Desert flowers can thrive and spawn beautiful landscapes even amidst the harshest of environmental conditions. Surviving blistering heat and sun, arid, dehydration and a host of other hardships, these flowers can awe visitors, who after driving through miles of isolation cannot believe their eyes when they arrive upon this amazing anomaly of life and fertility. Much like these inspiring creatures, my origins could be described by some as dismal, maybe even stifling. Being the daughter of a mother and father who grew up in poverty, I lost my father to H.I.V. and my mother and I overcame various obstacles throughout my life, including living with domestic violence, sexual abuse, unstable housing and other trials that made it difficult to look forward to a positive future. As a child, I was never sure where to turn to for inspiration and I struggled to meet expectations in school. Subsequently, I was diagnosed with a learning disability in reading and writing, and it became increasingly hard for me to believe in myself, without many personal successes to draw from. But even in the arid desert some flowers still survive, and through the encouragement of my grandparents and reading teacher, I pressed on, and by late elementary school I was able to overcome these challenges begin feeling my first...
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...Karakum Desert - Turkmenistan Location: The Karakum Desert is located in Turkmenistan in the Middle East and lies to the east of the Caspian Sea, between Uzbekistan to the north and the Iranian border to the south. The Karakum Desert has a latitude of 39⁰09’N and a longitude of 63⁰34’E which indicates that this desert is in the northern hemisphere. Source 1: World Atlas.com, http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/asia/meoutl.htm (28/02/10) Topography: Covering almost 90% of Turkmenistan today, the Karakum Desert is approximately 350,000 square km in area. The Karakum Desert is bordered by many varying natural landscapes such as valleys, mountains, plains, basins and salt marshes. This desert is divided into three parts: the elevated northern Trans-Unguz Karakum, the low-lying Central Karakum and the southeastern Karakum. Sand ridges are formed over time and so depending on the age, sand ridges in the Karakum Desert may range from 75 to 90 metres. More than 10% of the area consists of barchans which are crescent-shaped dunes which are often 9 meters or more in height. The inter dune depressions are covered by clay deposits up to 9 meters thick and act as catchment basins for the areas rainfall. The water collected in the basins allows fruits such as melons and grapes to be grown. Barchans Sand Ridges of the Karakum Desert Source 2: Turkmenistan: Deserts, http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://turkmenistan.gov.tm/_rus/uploads/posts/1215786990_3...
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...Desert Survival Decision-making The Desert Survival Simulation is a decision-making task that challenges individuals and groups to determine the best solution for survival. The general idea is that the plane crashed in the Sonoran Desert, and only the passengers survived. Fifteen items were salvaged from the wreck, and after each person ranks the items in order of necessity, a group of people is then formed to list the items in order of necessity together. Surviving in a desert is not a situation that many people are familiar with; therefore, it forces the group to use a synergistic decision-making process in order to come to an agreement. Synergistic decision-making is a process that includes problem-solving and interpersonal relations. According to Human Synergistics International (n.d.), “Problem-solving is the rational sequence of questions the team considers in reaching decisions, and interpersonal relations is the way people treat one another in solving the problem” (pg. 20). My team made up of myself, TQ, John, and Mike, used a synergistic approach with a focus on rational problem-solving. My team had no cohesiveness when we first got together. We started off by having each member say what their number one item choice for survival would be. None of us had the same top choice, so we began to chat about what we selected as our top choice, and why. There were some items that were commonly towards the top of the list; however, the conversation was not organized...
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...What is a place where it can be over 100° during the day, but at night can be below freezing cold? That is the Sahara desert, the biggest desert in the world! The desert is full of fun abiotic factors. Like animals and plants and weather oh my! Do you want to relax with no sound, this is the place to be. Plants Plants can be rare in some parts of the Sahara Desert, but there are a lot of plants. Like the cactus it can contain water and has shallow roots thats why it can survive in the arid deserts. Also The Aloe contains juice used as medicine. The medicine is for health problems, and the juice tastes good. The last plant is the tallest plant in the Sahara desert, the dragon tree. It has pointy leaves so animals can't eat it or hurt it. But it...
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...The Desert Tortoise; The desert tortoise is a type of tortoise is located in the Mojave Desert, Sonoran Desert and the North Western part of Mexico. This is where they are located naturally. The niche of the desert tortoise is in deserts (hence the name) or places with a hot climax. This animal is called a tortoise because they live on land and turtles live in the sea. They can grow up to 25 – 36cm in length. They can also grow up to 15cm in height. They range in weight from 11 – 23kg’s. Females are also usually smaller in size than males. Their shells are quite high domed and the colour of their shell can be from a light brown to dark with orange or yellowish markings. They also have powerful limbs that are equipped with claws to dig its underground burrows and their front limbs are covered with a thick covering of scales. This is a structural adaptation and helps them to survive ground temperatures greater than 140 degrees! This helps the tortoise to survive in its niche because if it didn’t have the adaptation of having scales to protect its skin from the scorching hot sand, its skin would burn. Desert tortoises occupy deserts, grasslands, canyon bottoms and rocky hillsides. The weather is usually very hot and the temperature can go past 45 degress! The types of plants that live in the area are cacti, agave, Joshua tree, desert wild flowers, etc. All these plants are able to survive in the hot desert conditions. They dig burrows under bushes, overhanging soil, rock formations...
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...(7 pts) 2. The Anza-Borrego desert is at 33°N of the equator. In terms of global influences, why do we find a desert there? - There is a desert 33°N of the equator because air expands and rises at the equator and moves towards the poles high in the troposphere. Due to this, this creates low pressure at the surface near the equator. Since the desert is 33°N of the equator, the air moving from the poles up creates high pressure at the surface. Through the high pressure, air flows back towards the equator and the air sinks down which replaces the air that is moving towards the equator. What this does is rises air at the equator and then descends it once it hits 33°. The winds which blow back to the equator at the surface are due to the Coriolis effect. Since rising air produces cloud and rain, it cannot happen at 33°N because the air is descending which produces little to no cloud which would not allow rainfall, only desert. (7 pts) 3. Imagine that a sample of plants are taken from Yosemite National Park and a sample of plants are taken from Merced and grown together in the same location (i.e., in a common garden). If plants from the two...
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...My journey began early monday morning around 7:00 A.M. at my sisters' house, Sara, in the coastal city of Newport Beach, California. Along with her was her husband, Jeremy, their two sons Sklyer and Logan, and myself. We were packing our belonging into their new vehicle to prepare for a trip to Jeremys' parents' house in the Mojave Desert. As we began to drive away i noticed all the lush green grass, the palm trees that seemed as tall as any building, and all the people outside carring on their lives. Then i glazed at the sparkling water in the ocean and thought how difficult it must be to live in desert conditions. Residents of the Mojave desert must live a more resislient life than most. We started out in bumper to bumper traffic on the highway. Hearing the sounds of car horns and motorists passing by i decided to play a movie to kill some time on our long voyage. It was shortly after the movie ended that we entered Barstow, California. The last source of gas and civilization for the next 40 miles. I gazed around noticing that this is the begining of the desert with a lack of plant life except for small patches of weeds and cactus. And i wondered what kind of place are we going to that is this sucluded from society. Skyler and Logan asleep from being bored from constantly watching nothing but miles and miles of sand, stone, cactus, and brushes, are awoken when we came upon a borax mine museum next to the actual mining pits that are still being used to this day...
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...Kathleen Muenzen MLA The Emergence: Pueblo Cultural Narrative in Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire According to an ancient Pueblo legend, passed down through generations of oral storytelling, all life emerged at once from the interior of the Earth into the “fifth world,” the habitable Earth, in an event called the Emergence. Leslie Marmon Silko, a nature writer and member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe, examines the natural world through the Native American cultural lens in “Landscape, History and the Pueblo Imagination.” She characterizes the human-nature relationship as one of partnership and integration, justified by the communal Emergence into being, and emphasizes that survival in a natural world rife with danger relies on eternal respect for and connection with all other elements in an environment. The opening and closing chapters of Edward Abbey’s autobiographical narrative, Desert Solitaire, parallel the Pueblo Emergence as they recount the experiences of a man who spends a summer in Arches National Park in Moab, Utah, and finds companionship in a non-human setting. Abbey’s odyssey from a separate world dominated by human civilization, through the metaphorical door of the Earth-worn arches, and into an ancient wilderness controlled by the collaboration of each composing element marks a “re-emergence” into an original state of existence. As Abbey migrates alone between the cold, dark material world that characterizes the human reality and the warm, colorful and illuminated...
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...Deserts, Glaciers, and Climate: Landscapes and Changes Deserts, Glaciers, and Climate: Landscapes and Changes It is no great mystery that the Earth is always changing. Talk of global warming is inescapable, making it a moral imperative to become educated about the Earth’s climate cycles and watch for changes and signs in Earth’s diverse landscapes. The following is a brief sketch of desert and glacial landscapes, as well as a look at historical and future climate changes. Deserts VS Glacial Landscapes Desert and glacial landscapes are very much on opposite sides of the landscape spectrum; however in terms of adjective depiction they are related: “abstract, beautiful, immense, remote ... and vulnerable” (Murck, Skinner, & Mackenzie, 2008, p. 376). Deserts The desert landscapes are primarily fashioned by wind and sand, however they are truly defined by the region’s annual rainfall. The landscapes in the desert are full of sand, alluvial fans, playas, oases, arroyos as well as deposits of salt. Eolian, better known as wind erosion, is the type of erosion seen in the desert. Desert is constantly altered and changing based on the direction of the wind. A highly noticeable example of a changing geological feature in a desert landscape would be the dunes. Dunes are hills or ridges of sand that are produced when the wind blows. These mounds of sand are irregular, yet they come in five common types, barchan, transverse, star...
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...Dana Smith January 28, 2016 STUDIO 1 “A Guerilla Gardener in South Central LA” Response Watching A Guerilla Gardener in South Central LA has truly opened my eyes to what It is like to live in a food desert. I have never heard of that phrase before watching this Ted Talk. That is a luxury that I take for granted as a girl who was raised in a farm town with an abundance of supermarkets and farmer’s markets. I never realized how hard fresh food is to come by in low-income areas like South Central, LA. Ron Finley was seeing his neighbors’ health declining more and more, wheelchairs being purchased and sold like used cars, and dialysis stores “popping up like Starbucks”. He made a statement that made the reality of this situation even more real. He says, “drive-thrus are killing more people than the drive-bys”. Can you even imagine that? The burger we eat is killing more people than bullets flying from a moving car. All it really takes is one person to step up and make a change. Finley saw that people his age were near their deathbeds and the generation coming up following in the footsteps placed before them. He realized that these fast foods were an issue and did something about it. His organization ‘LA Green Grounds’ consist of everyday people who want to see a change in their community. They plant orange trees, apple trees, potatoes, kale, aad things of the like all of South Central. This organization is improving their community by simply planting fruits and vegetables...
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... Their job was to help save Major-General Charles Gordon who was besieged at the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, sited on the Nile south of Cairo, Egypt. For that journey, a great number of voyageurs were hired to aid with the transportation of Wolseley’s force. The tricky part of the expedition began on the shores of Lake Superior. It finished 13 weeks later at Fort Garry. The men travelled in boats, and along the way they encountered chains of raging rivers. Major-General Gordon, sent to evacuate Egyptian soldiers and officials, only removed a few hundred to security before being besieged at Khartoum in March 1884. Wolseley was sent to rescue to him. Wolseley’s army had to move up the Nile and around its cataracts, through unwelcoming desert. The contingent sailed from Montreal on Sept. 14, 1884, clear for Alexandria in far away Egypt. The contingent arrived at Alexandria, Egypt, on Oct. 7, 1884. Preceding to its arrival, the contingent recorded its first loss. From Alexandria, the forces journeyed south up the Nile to Wadi Halfa. On Oct. 26, the Canadians joined Wolseley. After Wadi Halfa, the real rough work began. It was gruelling labour 13 to 14 hours a day. But with the entrance of the Canadians, the pace picked up. The first obstacle, the second cataract on the journey south was overcome within 10 days of the voyageurs’ appearance by a mixture of rowing, sailing and towing. As the expedition gradually worked its way upriver through November. When strong currents were...
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...Sand... I could almost tell you exactly how many grains lay in this desert. The days are long and hot, and the nights are longer and cold. It’s not a mistake that I am here, I chose to live this way. My name is Gabriel, I am twenty-eight years old. The Wahiba Sands became my home five weeks ago.... I used to be wealthy, with a family, I even owned the largest law firm in the united states. I used to be happy, and filled to the breaking points with love, and life. Until my company that I spent every penny, and every ounce of me on, fell under. My deep black hair began to turn a grey color. We started losing cases, and with a rising rate of failure came the rising debt. The company was going to crash, and I knew. A few months later, the bank came around to take the firm out of my hands. I made a horrible decision, I went to the bank that all of the pension money was stored. I emptied all of the accounts, and carried the money out of the bank in bags. As I was leaving I called my wife, and told her and my son Adrian to pack their things and get ready to leave the country, and that I would explain when I got home. I pull into the driveway, and see my wife standing outside the house. Frantically I told her what just happened. “Gabriel what on earth are you trying to do?!” she exclaimed. “Please just get in the car, I don’t have time. I need to leave, if you wait any longer I’ll have to leave without you and Adrian.” I proposed. She stood, unmoved, and with an unchanged mind...
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...shepherd boy, who is indeed, a dreamer. He dreams of finding great treasures and becoming rich, but he just doesn’t know where to start achieving his “personal legend.” Then, just when he was about to give up, Santiago met a very wise man that told him to listen to the omens, and he realized that these omens, good or bad, were all around him. He now knew that on your pursuit of your dreams, the universe and everything that surrounds it would do everything to help you accomplish your “personal legend.” We all believe that the universe is against us in our quest to make our dreams come true, but this novel tells us that if we just strive hard towards our goals, everything will work out in the very end. As Santiago started heading towards the desert, where he was destined to be, he faced eminent challenges and obstacles that he was yet to overcome. That is another thing that Coelho was trying to explicate, as we strive towards our dreams, we will surely face tough challenges and temptations to try and stray us away off course. These temptations and desires are there to test us if we are really determined and ordained to fulfill our “personal legends.” That is why Coelho created the character of Santiago, who conquered all obstacles and fought away his temptations. For example, Santiago had...
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...Eagle agreed and joined Peter and Lion. The mountains were tall and craggy. Lion slipped but Peter was swift enough to give him a hand and pull him up. Eagle with his sharp vision watched every step they took. Soon, they reached the valley below where they met Sheep. “Will you join us in our search for treasure?” Peter asked Sheep, “and keep us warm when it’s cold?” Sheep agreed and joined Peter, Lion and Eagle. A cold wind swept across the endless meadow. They all huddled against Sheep who kept them warm and cozy. The four finally reached the desert where they met Camel. " You are called the ship of the desert,” said Peter to Camel, “will you help us get across and join the treasure hunt too?” Camel agreed. All exclaimed in surprise. Peter, Lion and Sheep mounted the camel and happily set off across the vast desert with Eagle enjoying the spectacle from above. Camel began galloping and everybody cheered with excitement. Traversing the desert on Camel’s back was quite thrilling! The five finally reached the ocean where they met Turtle. “Can you help us cross the water?” Peter asked Turtle. “We are on a treasure hunt.” Turtle agreed and joined Peter, Lion, Eagle, Sheep, and Camel. The rough waves almost drowned the party, but Turtle skillfully steered them across. They met Owl on the...
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...Today was another average day. I heard that it was hot and dry today, but that didn’t effect me, because I was in the soil, where it was damp and cool. I’m never really affected by the weather and climate, so I am fine with being in many biomes. Of course, I wouldn’t last long in a desert, but to this Mediterranean climate, I can surely survive. A few days ago, I’ve hooked onto Bob’s roots. We have become such good friends! Our relationship is mutualistic, because I receive the nutrients that Bob makes, and I help give him mineral nutrients from the soil such as phosphorus! I was told by Bob that 95% of the plants need people like me to survive! That sounded so cool. Thanks to me, Bob is growing very fast, and that makes me very happy. My neighbouring Mycorrhiza friend Joe told me that plants were getting attacked by aphids! Hence, I quickly started producing chemicals that repelled aphids and attracted aphid-eating wasps! This is a great friend to have, because being able to communicate like that will protect our plants. When I help Bob, he gives me 20 percent of the glucose and sucrose produced by him! I can use these sugars to extend my hyphae deeper into the ground. There’s another use for it. I produce fruiting bodies with it! Some are mushrooms, which go above the ground, and some are truffles, which are below the ground. Rain isn’t the...
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