Talk:Kalahari Desert

"Parts of the Kalahari receive over 250 mm of erratic rainfall annually ... making the Kalahari a fossil desert."

I don't find the term fossil desert on Google. Can anyone define?

Same as a paleodesert, a fossil desert is basically a region that used to be a desert but which now gets more precipitation. It retains a lot of the desert geology such as sand dunes, though. I just added some stuff on this to the desert article, but I didn't have enough to create a whole separate article on it. Bryan 20:42, 8 May 2004 (UTC)

I have, therefore, changed the link from to point to the section in the desert page :Aidan (Not affiliated with the original question, just passing through)

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Have edited this page, removing the obscenities that appeared when the edit page showed up. Whoever put them in is obviously an incredibly mature person, who has a great deal of time to make fun of a people whom they neither understand nor want to understand. Congratulations on the perpetuation of Bushman-hating. !xuxobo

Use of the word desert

There seems to be some confusion here concerning the word desert in relation to the Kalahari.

Geographically, the Kalahari is best defined by the extent of `The Kalahari Sands' which are an ancient wind-blown deposit and the youngest unit of the Kalahari Group that cover over 2.5 million km² of Southern Africa. The region has indeed experience both wetter and drier conditions than today but that is not the reason it is called a desert. The term is misleading and few geographers or ecologists use it. Rather the terms hyper-arid, arid and semi-arid are preferred and refer to the balance between mean annual rainfall and potential evapotranspiration. This changes in broadly south west (around Bokspits in Botswana) to north east (up past Tsabong, Kang, Ghanzi towards Maun) direction as it gets progressively wetter. It is only called a desert because of the lack of surface water.

For excellent reviews on the physical and ecological characteristics of the Kalahari refer to either Michael Main's book, "Of dune and delta", or the now harder to find Thomas and Shaw "The Kalahari Environment".

User:Tom 14:38, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

hi

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kalahari desert

climate is very hot in this desert