What is a biome and what are its characteristics and distribution across the worlds space?
A biome is an ecosystem, there are five major ones that are the desert, forest, grassland, tundra and aquatic. Biomes are places that share similar climate and life forms, and those life forms are adapted to the climate of the ecosystem that they live in. The characteristics of the desert are hot and dry so very few large animals live there and even fewer plants grow. Some of the animals that live there are camels, snakes, scorpions and spiders, coyotes and dingo's that feed off the few plants that grow there and each other.
Deserts cover one fifth of the Earths surface, with deserts in North Africa, the lower U.S and Mexico, and Australia. There are colder deserts in lower latitude areas like Utah, Nevada and Western Asia. Deserts may get extremely hot during the day getting to temperatures from 50-80 degrees, but at night the desert can cool right down and drop to at most -3 degrees. The desert is an extremely dangerous place to explore because of the temperatures go from extremely hot to very cold and human bodies can't handle a drop in temperatures that large and can die from that.
At least 20% of the worlds surface is covered by deserts, some of the deserts are extremely large like the Sahara desert in Africa that is 3.5 million square miles in size.
At least 20% of the worlds surface is covered by deserts, some of the deserts are extremely large like the Sahara desert in Africa that is 3.5 million square miles in size.