22 Dry & Dusty Desert Photos

Though very vast and mostly barren, if you’ve seen a documentary like BBC’s Planet Earth you’ll know how intricate and spectacular deserts truly are. Here are 8 facts from Discover Magazine about deserts that will definitely blow your mind!

1. Sure, our planet looks like a watery blue marble from space, but one-third of Earth’s land surface is partially or totally desert.
2. The world’s largest desert is Antarctica. That’s right, an area doesn’t have to be hot to qualify—it just needs to lose more moisture than it gains.
3. There are parts of the Atacama Desert in Chile where no rain has ever been recorded. Scientists believe portions of the region have been in an extreme desert state for 40 million years—longer than any other place on Earth.
4. And yet more than 1 million people live in the Atacama today. Farmers extract enough water from aquifers and snowmelt streams to grow crops and raise llamas and alpacas.
5. The $1 billion, 2,900-mile Trans-Saharan highway will link Africa’s most populous city, Lagos, Nigeria, to Algeria and Tunisia.
6. About 1,000 square miles of Chinese land turns into desert every year, fueling deadly, globe-circling dust storms.
7. German particle physicist Gerhard Knies calculated that in six hours, the world’s deserts receive more energy from the sun than humans consume in a year. An 8,100-square-mile stretch of Saharan desert—an area the size of Wales—could power all of Europe.
8. About 46,000 square miles of arable land turn to desert every year due to climate change and practices such as forest clear-cutting. Desertification threatens the livelihoods of more ?than 1 billion people in 110 countries, the U.N. says.

I’ve put together a collection of 22 beautiful desert photos for your enjoyment! Disfruta!

Credit to respective artists.

credit: Melyssa Sobczyk

credit: Jong Soo(Peter) Lee

credit: meko

credit: Magdalena Bodzioch

credit: Robert Mehlan

credit: Oliver Kay

credit: waleed hider

credit: Moyan Brenn

credit: Moyan Brenn

credit: Moyan Brenn

credit: Bas Janssen

credit: Claire McClean

credit: FilMat

credit: Timothy Corbin

credit: JEAEJ

credit: Angiolo Manetti

credit: GEORGE DING

credit: Abdullah Al-Fhedi ??????? ???????

credit: xicoleao

credit: scott wedell

credit: Tom Grubbe

credit: tabanousbernard

Conclusion

So much of our world is covered in desert (one-third to be exact), and yet so much of that area is under utilized. I see the desert being a hotbed for solar energy in the not too distant future, and becoming a key contributer to our lives.

I hope that you enjoyed this photography collection! Thanks for stopping by!