Questions tagged [deserts]
For questions about the formation and existence of deserts, how civilizations survive in them, creatures of the desert, and related topics.
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In what sort of lands could I install my people? [closed]
Here is the plot: in a society close to earth and humans, but with medieval-like technologies, there is a group of people that is regularly migrated to a new place where it should installed itself. ...
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Turning the desert green with invasive plants
I don't like the sand, but apparently deserts are inevitable since I don't remember reading about a period on earth when there were no deserts.
So I was thinking, what invasive plants of earth has the ...
user100394
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What mount would work best in a desert setting as a cavalry animal?
The story I’m currently writing, is in a fantasy desert setting. It’s gonna be focused on world and city building so obviously the army is gonna play a big role. The technology of the world is based ...
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Deserts and Rainshadows near Equatorial Continent with North/South Mountains
So I have two continents on the equator with a north-south mountain range. One has the mountain range roughly in the middle, while the other is on the east coast. The plate boundary for the east coast ...
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Where in the American West Would a New City Arise? [closed]
It's been 20 years since a global pandemic wiped out over 99% of the world population, and America was not spared. Of the 330 million people in the country (give or take a few million), only about 1.5 ...
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How could a black desert form?
While there are areas on our world that hold vast amounts of black sand like Reynisfjara, they are usually confined to beaches and don't cover a large area.
What I'm wondering is how can a desert with ...
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How can I organize societal structure based on harsh climates?
I'm writing a fantasy old-west type novel, and I want this world to have extreme climates. I have a few questions, particularly for Americans:
I want the mostly settled areas (mid to low income ...
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Would this fire-based magical catastrophe turn a forest region into a desert?
A massive magic ritual involving the nation's greatest spellcasters utilizing an entire city as their focus, either through miscalculation or sabotage, inadvertently open a massive portal into the ...
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Could a hot desert plausibly exist in this location?
I'm attempting to construct a world such that a hot desert like the Sahara exists in the region outlined in yellow.
The same map depicting prevailing winds (thick arrows) and ocean currents (thin ...
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In a desert made of sugar, what would happen if it rained?
The next setting I'm working on is a desert made entirely of sugar. It's unclear how this came to be, but it's created a unique and bizarre landscape.
Something I've been considering, is what might ...
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Could a Massive Freshwater Lake and River System Exist in a Desert Environment?
In my book series, there is this lake called Lake Pheron. Lake Pheron's surface is located about 2,200 feet above sea level in a mostly flat, inland area called the Tangolian Desert. This desert is ...
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How to Supply a City on top of a Vertical Cliff?
In my fantasy series, there’s this city called Pharcos situated on top of nearly vertical 3,500ish foot high sandstone cliffs above the river it uses for water.
This river, called the Clazelis, along ...
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How could farmland be turned into a desert?
How would an agricultural world be desertified? I have a community of farmers, and the environment is working against them but they are making it work with nitrates (got the idea from Disney Zorro ...
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How does a plain surrounded by desert get rain?
So, in my world, I have a city built in a plain surrounded by a desert. The plain got to be there by magic and general hand waving and was sustained in a similar way. At some point, that stopped being ...
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Can snow dunes form naturally?
Suppose I have a very big area as big as Gobi desert and it is windy all years round, but it is covered in snow instead of sand since Earth is experiencing another ice age right now. I am not sure if ...
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How to build roads in a windy desert
The world is a desert, and it's awfully windy. The wind is as unpredictable as possible with an average speed around 150km/h. It's usual to see wind reaching 300km/h once every three days.
The human ...
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Could a river civilization develop in a cold desert climate?
There seems to be a trend with the oldest civilizations (Civilizations being urbanized societies with a government and social heirarchy) starting around river valleys surrounded by desert; the ...
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Could an empire be built around a desert?
I'm trying to make an empire that has a large (almost as big as the Sahara) desert in the middle of its boundaries. The capital would be found in the north near a mountain range, and the empire ...
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Can a desert and semi-desert be right beside each other geographically?
One of the countries in my novel is Semi-Arid, but I want it to become more like a hot and dry desert the farther West one travels (like the Sahara). Is this possible?
PS. There are mountains to the ...
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Can I have sand in a desert that would make it impossible to differentiate between land and horizon?
I am looking for an end-result where one would not be able to differentiate between land and horizon. And I want it in a desert. So either some new, exotic material has to make-up the sand. Or it has ...
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Weather in a desert planet
Neviat, it is a desert planet with 81.5% of the Earth's atmospheric pressure and 80% of its gravity, it is generally dry but has many lakes and oases at its poles, the temperature across the latitudes ...
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Making stillsuits less fantasy - how to dump the heat?
As we all know1, stillsuit as described in the books would cook the user. Water would carry heat away from the body, but then it would be caught again, and again with the heat.
Assuming energy is not ...
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Can a plant or alien plant have fruit and shoot seeds as well?
On my planet Chlorea there are desserts and in them is a tree-like plant. During the dry season nothing really happens; the plant saves water, they lose leaves to save water etc. But in the wet season ...
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How to explain the presence of tropical rainforest and temperate forest at an equal latitude near the equator, in a fictional world?
That's the rough outline of my fantasy world. The entire location is somewhat shifted towards the Northern Hemisphere because you can't see the polar ice caps of the southern hemisphere.
Now, the dark ...
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Vehicles vs work animals in a desert planet
Would animals like camels and horses be more useful/practical in the deep desert than vehicles like dune buggies and sandrails?
Basically, I have a planet that's mostly desert surrounded with rock ...
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Are snow caps plausible for a mountain range in an extremely large desert?
I have a very large desert, approximately 15 000 km across from west to east (the north-south distance is around 4 000 km, although it's at a bit of an angle). The desert is bounded at one edge by a ...
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Can a continent be completely desert?
I want my continent to be at least 90% desert. It has a square shape with several peninsulas. Kinda like Australia, but more than 3 times bigger and it's not flat(well it does have flat areas, but not ...
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Can I eliminate a dry continental high pressure spot inland by adding a huge body of water in the middle of it?
Can I eliminate a dry continental high pressure spot inland by adding a huge body of water in the middle of it? Like this sample picture:
The red arrows around the continent are warm ocean currents ...
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Feasibility of a sand gliding creature?
Would it make sense for a desert creature to glide along the sand to traverse long distances?
There's a number of gliding animals in nature, most of which use it as an efficient travel option for long ...
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Is it possible for the soil of a desertic exoplanet to be so copper rich that its surface is mostly covered in green-blue deserts?
Here on Earth, Mars and most of others if not all terrestrial planets in the universe, iron is their most common metallic element because iron is in general the most common metal in the universe.
Here ...
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How can nations control large plains and deserts?
How can organized nations in a fantasy setting control large land masses (20-30,000 km²) made of deserts, rocky deserts, and drymuds?
By control, I mean enforcing laws, defending it during conflicts, ...
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How to create a rainforest and desert in proximity to each other such that the desert can be hottest or coldest possible on an Earth-like planet
I have created a tall mountain range and am creating a forest on one side and desert on another.
Can this forest be a rainforest? If so, are there any examples on Earth where rainforests and deserts ...
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Is This Desert Planet Realistic?
Okay, I have a desert planet that orbits an M0 star and an G0 star at an circumbinary orbital radius of .9 AU from the shared center of gravity of its twin suns. It’s tilted on its axis by 23.5 ...
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What would be the effects on wildlife of an atomic bomb on a Sahelian or Saharan grassland or desert?
So, I'm coming up with a world in which, after a nuclear war in Africa, there is a bunker in the country of Chad. The main characters leave the bunker as the radioactivity has mostly worn off (after ...
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What would be the effects on terrain of an atomic bomb on a Sahelian or Saharan grassland or desert?
So, I'm coming up with a world in which, after a nuclear war in Africa, there is a bunker in the country of Chad. The landscape has been affected by over 50 atomic bombs. The main characters leave the ...
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Time estimate for converting desert to savanna/forest
I'm building a world in whose history climactic changes causes a region of desert to start seeing regular rain. This causes the native culture of the desert people to also change along with it, ...
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How to Cause a Hydrosphere Apocalypse Part I The Great Drought
This is part one of a two part question. Part two can be found her (How to Cause a Hydrosphere Apocalypse Part II The Great Flood)
Desert planets are a staple of science fiction. And while we have ...
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Why might an area of land be so hot that it smokes?
I'm attempting to design a desert area that could almost constantly be covered in a thin layer of smoke. It does not block out the sun but instead sticks closer to the ground. The land is hot, arid, ...
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Are the deserts in this continent realistically placed?
I have asked previously how I could create an earth-like world with as many deserts as possible in it. Based on the answers I got, I designed this continent, and asked for a reality-check, but the ...
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What temperatures would occur several meters below different types of deserts?
What temperatures can one expect 50-150 meters below different types of deserts? The rocks in my campaign heavily feature iron sediments, like in Australia, but since this is a fantasy world I am open ...
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what I need to make mirage to constantly occur in sand desert?
I want to make a desert known to always generate mirages (I don’t mean it necessary occur during night though, only during a day is fine too, but if it possible for mirages to happen during the night, ...
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Dusty city living
I am writing about a magical-realistic city in Latin America that is very dusty, See: A brief introduction for visitors
How do modern humans adapt their lives to urban environments with frequent dust ...
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Would large enough equatorial continent produce a central desert through sheer size?
As I understand it, the deserts require a number of conditions to occur, leading to the overall decrease in precipitation. And areas around equator usually lack these.
While there are some deserts ...
user61274
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How to maximize the sand depth of a desert planet
NB: There is a related question – What kind of planet could have giant sand worms? – but this one is concerned specifically with the sand. Giant sand worms would be awesome incidental.
Assuming a ...
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Physics Question: Time needed to melt vast blocks of ice in the desert? [closed]
Please consider a physics question that I am asking here because I have no ability to calculate the answer myself.
Given a large cubical mass of water ice is deposited on a desert location on Earth,
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Hygiene in a Desert-like setting
The setting is a desert-like area, meaning there just enough water for one to drink and not to dry out.
How would someone care for hygiene, like wash themselves, when water is a precious rarity? Is ...
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What could be a valuable resource in an isolated desert, where workforce should be really small in an era before the discovery of electricity?
It's an era before the discovery of electricity and I'm aiming for realism.
There is a small desert town of only 15 people by a river and along a strong trade route (so they don't have to produce ...
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How does trophy hunting helps in conservation of rare "Poop Bomber" dragon?
In the modern days, World Wildlife Fund has promised a donation of a lump sum of $100 million to save a certain endangered dragon species found only in the Sahara desert.
The adult dragon weights 1.5 ...
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Possibility of a "hot Mars"
Premise/question
Correct me if I'm wrong, or if humans have terraformed the planet by the time you're reading this, but Mars is mostly desert-like. It has large ice caps which contain most of its ...
user75058
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Implications of ocean basins filled with coral sand
Setting
Assume we have a planet with shallow oceans. A fast-growing coral (or any organism with calcium carbonate skeletons) fills the oceans from the bottom up, layer by layer. As the biomass of the ...
user75058