Welcome to Mr Aslanov’s Lessons QUESTION-TYPE BASED TESTS FunEnglishwithme +99894 6333230
TEST 2 – How deserts are Formed? A. A desert refers to a barren section of land, mainly in arid and semi-arid areas, where there is
almost no precipitation, and the environment is hostile for any creature to inhabit. Deserts have been
classified in a number of ways, generally combining total precipitation, how many days the rainfall occurs,
temperature, humidity, and sometimes additional factors. In some places, deserts have clear boundaries
marked by rivers, mountains or other landforms, while in other places, there are no clear-cut borders
between desert and other landscape features.
B. In arid areas where there is not any covering of vegetation protecting the land, sand and dust
storms will frequently take place. This phenomenon often occurs along the desert margins instead of within
the deserts, where there are already no finer materials left. When a steady wind starts to blow, fine particles
on the open ground will begin vibrating. As the wind picks up, some of the particles are lifted into the air.
When they fall onto the ground, they hit other particles which will then be jerked into the air in their turn,
initiating a chain reaction.
C. There has been a tremendous deal of publicity on how severe desertification can be, but the
academic circle has never agreed on the causes of desertification. A common misunderstanding is that a
shortage of precipitation causes the desertification—even the land in some barren areas will soon recover
after the rain falls. In fact, more often than not, human activities are responsible for desertification. It might
be true that the explosion in world population, especially in developing countries, is the primary cause of
soil degradation and desertification. Since the population has become denser, the cultivation of crops has
gone into progressively drier areas. It’s especially possible for these regions to go through periods of severe
drought, which explains why crop failures are common. The raising of most crops requires the natural
vegetation cover to be removed first; when crop failures occur, extensive tracts of land are devoid of a plant
cover and thus susceptible to wind and water erosion. All through the 1990s, dryland areas went through a
population growth of 18.5 per cent, mostly in severely impoverished developing countries.
