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Definition: Kalahari Desert |
Kalahari DesertNoun1. A desert in southwestern Africa - largely Botswana. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Synonym: Kalahari DesertSynonym: Kalahari (n). (additional references) |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
The Kalahari has vast areas covered by red-brown sands and has no permanent surface water. Drainage is by dry valleys, seasonally inundated pans, and the large salt pans of the Makgadikgadi Depression in Botswana and Etosha Pan in Namibia. However, the Kalahari is not a true desert. Parts of the Kalahari receive over 250 mm of erratic rainfall annually and are quite well vegetated; it is only truly arid in the south-west (under 175mm of rain annually) making the Kalahari a fossil desert. Summer temperatures in the Kalahari range from 20 - 40 °C. In winter, the Kalahari has a dry, cold climate with frosts at night. The average low winter temperature can be below 0 °C.
The Kalahari has a number of game reserves - the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR, the world's second largest protected area), Khutse Game Reserve and the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park. Animals that live in the region include brown hyenas, lionss, meerkats, several species of antelope (including the oryx or gemsbok and the tsamma), and many species of bird and reptile. Vegetation in the Kalahari consists mainly of grasses and acacias but there are over 400 identified plant species present.
The area is the ancestral land of the Bushmen peoples. There are many distinct tribes, and they have no collective name for themselves. The names San and Basarwa are sometimes used, but the people themselves dislike these names (San is a Khoi word meaning outsider, and Basarwa a Herero word meaning person who has nothing) and prefer the name "Bushman". They are thought to have been the first human inhabitants of Southern Africa; there is evidence that they have been living there continuously as nomadic hunter-gatherers for at least twenty thousand years.
In 1965 the Botswanan government forced all the Bushmen from their lands within the borders of that country and "resettled" them in fixed encampments. The government has given several different justifications for their action: that it was for purposes of nature conservation; that it was too expensive to continue to supply the Bushmen with water (the water table had been lowered by farming and other development); that it was "to enable them to share in the wealth of the country"; that it was for their own good to become settled and "civilised". The campaign group Survival International have alleged that the real reason for the re-settlement is to free up the land for diamond mining, but a different group campaigning for the rights of the Bushmen, Ditshwanelo (the Botswanan Centre for Human Rights), dispute this, claiming that the Government's motives are genuine, but misguided.
There are large coal, copper, and nickel deposits in the region. One of the largest diamond mines in the world is located at Orapa in the Makgadikgadi, northeastern Kalahari.
Kalahari is derived from the Tswana word "Kgalagadi", meaning "the great thirst".
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Kalahari Desert."
| Domain | Title |
Books | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Thumbnail | Description & Credit | Thumbnail | Description & Credit |
 | On the edge of the Kalahari Desert in Namibia, sand dunes are encroaching onto once-fertile lands in the north. Healthy vegetation appears red in this image; in the center, notice the lone red dot. It is the result of a center-pivot irrigation system, evidence that at least one optimistic farmer continues to work the fields despite the approaching sand. Credit: NASA. |  | African oryx, from the Kalahari Desert, introduced into New Mexico in the 1970's, roams and flourishes in the rangeland desert scrubs of southern New Mexico near the summit of San Augustin mountains. This species forages upon soaptree yucca, black grama, sideoats grama, plains bristlegrass, alkali sacaton, mesa dropseed and opunita among other grasses and forbs. Credit: Lane R. Hauser. |
Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits. | |||
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day |
kalahari desert | 68 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Language | Translations for "Kalahari Desert"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Russian | пустыня Калахари. (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "a-a-a-d-e-e-h-i-k-l-r-r-s-t" | |
-4 letters: dekaliters, hairstreak, heraldries, reradiates, threadlike, trailheads, trihedrals. | |
-5 letters: arterials, darkliest, deathlike, dekaliter, detailers, diarrheal, diarrheas, ditherers, dreariest, earthlier, earthlike, earthrise, elaterids, eradiates, latherers, railheads, rehearsal, reradiate, retailers, rethreads, sheldrake, shikarred, slathered, slithered, streakier, threaders, threadier, trailered, trailhead, treadlers, trihedral. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)4B 61 6C 61 68 61 72 69 44 65 73 65 72 74 |
| Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)
|
Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) (references)01001011 01100001 01101100 01100001 01101000 01100001 01110010 01101001 00100000 01000100 01100101 01110011 01100101 01110010 01110100 |
HTML Code (1990) (references)K a l a h a r i   D e s e r t |
ISO 10646 (1991-1993) (references)004B 0061 006C 0061 0068 0061 0072 0069 0044 0065 0073 0065 0072 0074 |
Encryption (beginner's substitution cypher): (references)45677867746784752387185718486 |
| 1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Usage: Commercial 4. Images: Slideshow | 5. Images: Photo Album 6. Expressions: Internet 7. Translations: Modern 8. Anagrams | 9. Orthography 10. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
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