Daily English Puzzles & Riddles - Challenge Yourself!
The Sahara and SahelBy: Roberto BarerraPassage #11 The Sahara is a giant desert located in northern Africa. It is the world's largest traditional desert, meaning a hot, dry desert with large amounts of sand, and it is the second largest desert in the world. The largest desert is Antarctica, but that is a very different type of desert compared to the dry, hot sands of the Sahara.The Sahara stretches across northern Africa from the coast of the Red Sea in the east all the way to the Atlantic Ocean in the west. It covers an area of about 3.5 million square miles and is large enough to contain almost the entire continental United States. Furthermore, as if the Sahara was not large enough already, it is expanding south into the Sahel about thirty miles every year.3The Sahel forms the border between the southern Sahara and the northern Sudan, a more fertile region below the desert. The Sahel is a band of somewhat dry savanna that runs for 2400 miles from coast to coast all along the southern edge of the desert. A savanna is a grassy plain with coarse grasses and only a few scattered trees. Since the Sahel receives more rainfall than the Sahara during the annual monsoon rains, people have been able to settle in this region and form empires for thousands of years. These empires, called the Sahelian Kingdoms, became rich and powerful by controlling the trade routes that crossed the Sahara. The control of these routes was invaluable because they connected the very limited number of oases in the vast desert. An oasis is an isolated fertile area in a desert that usually has a spring, well, or other source of water. The people of the Sahelian Kingdoms had a great deal of help conquering the sands of the great Sahara.4|n order to trade and be effective in conquering new lands and defending their own, the people of these empires relied heavily on the use of horses and the dromedary camel. The horses used were very swift and reliable in desert travel and had the ability to carry heavy loads. But even with how useful the horses were, the dromedary was even better suited for desert travel. The dromedary camel has one hump on its back and has a great deal of strength and endurance. It is nearly as swift as the horses used for trade and travel, but it is easier to load and has the ability to carry heavier loads.Thanks to these two animals and the knowledge of the whereabouts of the scattered oases that provide water and shelter, people have been able to live in and around the Sahara for thousands of years.Passage #2The Sahara is a desert located on the African continent. It is the largest hot desert in the world, and the third largest desert overall after Antarctica and the Arctic. Its area of 9,200,000 square kilometers (3,600,000 sq mi) is comparable to the area of China or the United States. The name 'Sahara' is derived from a dialectal Arabic word for"desert."The desert comprises much of North Africa, excluding the fertile region on the Mediterranean Sea coast, the Atlas Mountains of the Maghreb, and the Nile Valley in Egypt and Sudan. It stretches from the Red Sea in the east and the Mediterranean in the north to the Atlantic Ocean in the west, where the landscape gradually changes from desert to coastal plains. To the south, it is bounded by the Sahel, a belt of semi-arid tropical savanna around the Niger River valley and the Sudan Region of Sub-Saharan Africa. The Sahara can be divided into several regions including: the western Sahara, the central Ahaggar Mountains, the Tibesti Mountains, the Air Mountains, the Tnr desert, and the Libyan Desert. For several hundred thousand years, the Sahara has alternated between desert and savanna grassland in a 41,000 year cycle caused by the precession of the Earth's axis as it rotates around the Sun, which changes the location of the North African Monsoon. The area is next expected to become green in about 15,000 years (17,000AD). There is a suggestion that the last time that the Sahara was converted from savanna to desert it was partially due to overgrazing by the cattle of the local population.What is NOT true of these two passages?- They both discuss the geography of the region.- They both discuss the role played by the dromedary camel in the region.- They both discuss the changing conditions in the region.- They both discuss the size of the region.Please Awnser! Thank You in Advance!!!!!!!!!!!!