The Gobi Desert
Shekou International School, Angel Sun, Non-Fiction: Group 3
T
he Gobi Desert, the name coming from the Mongolian’s point of view meaning “waterless
place”. It is a desert that covers parts of north and northwestern China and Southern
Mongolia, unlike the Sahara that is located only a few sand dunes away from the Gobi.
It has an area of 1,300,000 kilometer squared and an elevation of 1,580 meters, being the
world’s fifth largest desert. The Gobi Desert also had a lot of attention in history, because it was a
part of the great Mongol Empire and a various important cities along the Silk Road.
The Gobi’s is made out of chalk and other sedimentary rocks that are mainly in the Cenozoic
in age (about 65 million years old),in the central Gobi there are also remains of dinosaurs from
the Mesozoic Era (about 250 to 65 million years ago) and fossils of Cenozoic mammals. The Gobi
desert also contains Paleolithic and Neolithic sites from the ancient generations.
Before the Gobi Desert was formed, it was once a fertile land with large amounts of farmland.
However, currently now the Gobi Desert is expanding at a quick rate, a process that is known as
desertification. The expansion is forming on the southern edge of China, where every year there is
3,600 km2 of grassland overtaken by the Gobi Desert. In the past 20 years, dust storms and other
natural hazards have increased (occurring due to the fact of desertification), have caused severe
damages to China’s agricultural economy.
The expansion of the Gobi Desert is mostly impacted because of human activities occurring
in its locations; especially deforestation, overgrazing, and a number of water resources.
Desertification is currently a huge worry toward the Chinese government, and they are currently
taking actions by planting new greens in order to stop the spread of the desert. The forest barrier
in its creation is also known as the Green Wall of China. The Chinese government has tried
numerous ways to slow down the expansion of the desert, yet made a small amount of success,
but the beneficial part is that there haven’t been major effects toward the country.
The temperature at the Gobi Desert can reach +40° C in summer, and -40 in the winter. In
some areas of the desert, it only rain once every two or three years; the precipitation averaging
to even less than 100 millimeters per year. A strong wind is also one of the major weather
components and can increase up to 140 kilometers per hour.
The Gobi Desert might just be known to people as a waterless lifeless desert, but there are lots
of interesting facts regarding to this environment. There are a lot of different sources representing
many important fossils, with the first dinosaur eggs as one of the examples. In certain parts of
the desert which is yet unaffected by the harsh conditions, it is where forty-five different kinds
of species of organisms and birds, live. Some of these live organisms include the black-tailed
gazelles, marbled polecats, Bactrian camels, snow leopards, golden eagles, brown bears, and
different species of the wolves. Though it is waterless and full of sand, it is possible for humans to
use cars as their main transportation to get through this huge sandy desert.
The drainage of the Desert is mostly underground; surface rivers only have little constant
of flowing water. Mountain streams are confined to the Gobi’s border and quickly dries up
as it disappear into the soil. Most of the soil of the Gobi Desert is grayish brown and brown
carbonaceous. Many rivers only flow in summer. During the Holocene Epoch (about 11,700 years
ago), the Gobi’s lakes have shrunk in size, leaving a series of problems.
