Australia's largest desert, covering about 348,750 square kilometers of Western Australia and South Australia between the Eastern Goldfields and the Gawler Ranges, with sandhills, grassland plains, gibber pavement and salt lakes under 200 to 250 millimeters of annual rainfall. Spinifex grasses, mulga acacia shrubs and hardy eucalypts support red kangaroos, emus, the great desert skink and burrowing specialists such as the southern marsupial mole and the water-holding frog, while dingoes and large monitor lizards such as the perentie and sand goanna sit atop the food web. About 31 percent of the desert lies within reserves and Indigenous protected areas, though residual plutonium-239 contamination remains from British nuclear weapons tests at Maralinga and Emu Field in the 1950s and 1960s. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Facts
Classification
Biogeographic Realm Area (sq km) Connections
Demonstrates
Strong winds crossing the sparsely vegetated sand ridges and clay pans of this desert raise large dust storms, a recurring feature of the Australian arid interior.
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica
In Biome
In the Other Atlases
- Also in Geography Atlas: Australia, found in there.
Sources
1. Great Victoria Desert (Wikipedia)
WikipediaLocation and description section
The Great Victoria is the largest desert in Australia, and consists of many small sandhills, grassland plains, areas with a closely packed surface of pebbles (called desert pavement or gibber plains), and salt lakes.
- Biogeographic realm: australasian (derived from location stated in entity description)
View the Source World Wildlife Fund
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.- Demonstrates: Wildfire
- Demonstrates: Dust Storm
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