Hello everyone. In today’s talk, I’m going to tell you something about deserts, what they are and how they are formed.

A desert is a hot, dry, sandy place. A desert is also a beautiful land of silence and space. The sun shines, the wind blows, and time and space seem endless. Nothing is soft. The sand and the rocks are hard, and many of the plants, such as the cactus, have hard needles instead of leaves.

The size and location of the world’s deserts are always changing. Over millions of years, as climates change and mountains rise, new dry and wet areas develop. But within the last 100 years, deserts have been growing at a frightening speed. This is partly because of natural changes, but the greatest desert makers are humans.

In the 19^th century some people living in English colonies in Australia got rabbits from England. Today there are millions of rabbits in Australia, and they eat every plant they can find. The great desert that covers the centre of Australia is growing.

Farming first began in the Tigris-Euphrates, but today the land there is a desert. In dry areas, people can plant crops on dry and poor land. When there are one or two very dry years, the plants die, and the land becomes desert.

In developing countries, 90 percent of the people use wood for cooking and heat. They cut down trees for firewood. But trees are important. They cool the land under them and keep the sun off smaller plants. When leaves fall from a tree, they make the land richer. When the trees are gone, the smaller plants die, and the land becomes desert.

Humans can make deserts, but humans can also prevent their growth. Algeria planted a green wall of trees across the edge of the Sahara to stop the desert sand from spreading. Mauritania planted a similar wall around its capital. Iran puts a thin covering of petroleum on sandy areas and plant trees. Other countries build long canals to bring water to the desert areas.

Well, that’s all for my talk. Thank you for listening.