LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Kalahari Desert: Rainfall
built 487 days ago
The Kalahari Desert is not a true desert in the sense that it is well vegetated and receives copious but very unpredictable rainfall. It does ... hold no permanent surface water and has resulted in a fascinating ecological challenge for flora, fauna and the San Bushmen who have inhabited the area for thousands of years.
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Because of its unreliable rainfall and somewhat dry conditions, the Kalahari Desert remains sparsely populated. The Basarwa or San people are known as the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert for over hundreds of years. They continue to live in settlements within and around the desert and are still traditional in their lifestyle.
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Although called a desert, the Kalahari Desert is not in fact a desert at all! At least not by the normal standards for classifying a desert. A more correct term would be a 'thirstland', as no-where in the Kalahari Desert sands is the rainfall less than 150mm a year. At times, it has been ... called a ‘Fossil desert”.
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The Kalahari is truly one of the world’s most surprising landscapes; far from being a world of barren dryness, the desert teems with a myriad species which have adapted to their environment in a number of astonishing ways. Most startling... is the desert’s beauty; a golden sea of snd and dunes carved by winds – uncompromising, harsh, but utterly breathtaking. With little more than 10 to 20 cm of rainfall per year, the flora and fauna in the Kalahari are in a daily struggle for survival and cannot cope with the additional pressure of unchecked visitors or encroaching cattle.
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[W]ith over 250mm of rainfall a year, the Kalahari is not a true desert (deserts must have less than 250mm). There is an abundance of plant and animals wildlife which must adapt to living in a harsh and unforgiving environment. Summer temperatures can reach over 40 °C while winters average below 0 °C. Plants cannot expect many nutrients from the dry sandy soil, and animals must survive on little with enough energy to avoid both predators and the sun.
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Although it's called Kalahari Desert, it's not really a desert. Why? Because it receives 250 mm of rainfall. Only places where the rainfall is lesser than this are considered deserts. So, actually, it's a semi-arid and sandy area.
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