How deep is the Sahara desert? If you hollow out the desert sand, what will you see?

After millions of years of evolution, human beings have become the well-deserved world hegemony on the earth today. In the face of any other creature, human beings can win victory through their own wisdom and technological crystallization. But even so, we are still very small in front of nature. Especially in the face of some extremely harsh natural environments, they still dare not set foot in it.

Take the Sahara Desert as an example. As the largest desert in the world, the horror of the Sahara Desert is absolutely known to everyone. Even if they are fully prepared, no one is willing to take the risk to challenge the cruelty of the Sahara Desert. Now, although we already know how wide the Sahara Desert is, how many people know how deep the Sahara Desert is? Not only that, if we hollow out the sand of the Sahara Desert, what will happen below?

Origin of the Sahara Desert

According to data, the Sahara Desert was formed about 2.5 million years ago and is currently the largest desert in the world. The reason why the name Sahara is mainly due to the problem of transliteration of Arabic. It's just that at that time, people only had a general impression of the Sahara: maybe they couldn't finish this journey in a lifetime.

In the current mainstream cognition of the scientific community, the formation of the Sahara Desert is mainly due to the influence of biological activities that lived in the Sahara region 2.5 million years ago. In those days, the herbivores living in the Sahara were unusually diverse and had no natural enemies. Under such circumstances, the Sahara, which should have been called grassland, gradually developed in the direction of land desertification.

Perhaps many people will wonder, just that animals can make such drastic changes in the environment of a certain area just by eating forage? This is too unrealistic. What's more, the Sahara Desert covers an area of ​​9.32 million square kilometers, which is much larger than the entire area of ​​Australia. In contrast, if it only affects a certain area, it may be more convincing.

In fact, the fact that animals eat forage is just an incentive. When these creatures eat their food recklessly and have an impact on the environment, the climate of the Sahara will also be affected to some extent. In the subsequent development process, organisms continue to migrate in order to survive, and the scope of influence will naturally become larger and larger.

To give a simple example, we all know that the number of tens of billions of hares in Australia has become a headache for countless Australians. But who can imagine that at the beginning, the number of these rabbits was only a few dozen. Perhaps the Sahara experienced such a catastrophe millions of years ago.

Except for the influence of biology and climate, in fact, the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences has proposed another possibility. Perhaps the Sahara Desert appeared on Earth about 7 to 10 million years ago. The main reason for its formation is the shrinkage of the Tethys Sea, which has led to a sharp decline in water resources in the Sahara Desert and triggered subsequent bad changes.

There are many people who agree and disagree with this possibility, but no matter what the reason is, it can actually prove that the Sahara Desert was not what it is now millions of years ago. As for what changes will take place in the future, it depends on what choices we human beings will make on the development of the environment.

depth of the sahara desert

Since the Sahara Desert is so vast, how deep is it? If it is only a shallow layer on the surface, it cannot affect such a wide range. In fact, to understand the depth of the Sahara Desert, it is necessary to have a certain understanding of the different desert types.

In modern desert geology research, scientists are generally used to classify deserts into four types, namely rock desert, gravel desert, mud desert and desert. Among these four types, the last desert is the most orthodox desert type, which is the desert picture we see most often on TV, while the other three belong to the extension of the desert.

First of all, in terms of rock deserts, this actually refers to a kind of mountain desert, and rocks are the most important part of the entire desert. In the central Sahara and the higher terrain in the east, rock deserts have become the most important part of the entire desert.

Compared with other areas, the overall depth of the rock desert is not prominent, with an average of only ten meters. But it is precisely because of the existence of rocks that it is also the area with the most species of animals in the Sahara Desert.

The second is the gravel desert, which can be felt only from the name. The desert in this part of the area is generally composed of gravel, which belongs to a transition between rock desert and desert. Taking our country as an example, gravel deserts can be seen everywhere in the fringes of basins such as Tarim and Qaidam.

Since it is a transitional stage, the depth of the gravel desert is naturally in the middle reaches of the entire Sahara Desert. If we think of the subsurface of the Sahara as the slope of a mountain, then the location of the gravel desert is just about halfway up the mountain.

Next is the special mud desert and the desert with the deepest depth. As the name suggests, the mud desert is actually a desert composed of clay. In the depths of the Sahara Desert, the distribution of mud deserts is not fixed. As long as the terrain is relatively low, mud deserts may appear. The desert depth in this area is generally between the rock desert and the gravel desert.

The Lop Nur area, which is familiar to our Chinese, is actually the most typical mud desert terrain. Although the overall environment is more dangerous, due to the presence of more minerals, such areas generally have very rich reserves of potassium salts. If it can be developed reasonably, it will also be of great help to economic growth.

Of course, the most important component of the Sahara, named after the desert, is the orthodox desert terrain. The danger of the Sahara is actually mainly reflected in its extremely rich desert content. In this terrain, a variety of extreme environmental or geological conditions are possible. As long as there is the slightest negligence, people are likely to die because of it.

In this area, the depth of the desert can even reach hundreds of meters. It is for this reason that people call the Sahara a sea of ​​deserts without any exaggeration. Even if the whole is averaged, the depth of the desert is close to 100 meters. Humans want to manage the environment here, and the degree of difficulty is absolutely beyond what ordinary people can imagine.

landscape at the bottom of the desert

Judging from the overall sand and gravel "reserves" of the Sahara Desert, it is unrealistic for us to hollow out the Sahara Desert. But we might as well make an assumption for this. Suppose that the desert or a certain area of ​​desert can be hollowed out. What kind of scene will human beings finally see?

Judging from the deserts of the Middle East countries, there are often a lot of oil resources in the depths of the deserts, so is the same for the Sahara Desert? In fact, the formation of oil resources has nothing to do with deserts. As far as the most well-known bio-oil theory is concerned today, if a certain area wants to have a large amount of oil resources, a large number of animals and plants must have lived here in ancient times.

At this point, although geologists have proved that the Sahara Desert satisfies the conditions, because the area of ​​the desert is too large, the oil resources found in the Sahara Desert are still very limited. Even the largest oil field discovered in the northern Sahara desert today, the Hassi Messaoud oil field, is at the bottom of the top ten oil fields in the world.

In fact, apart from the expected oil resources, the most likely scenery at the bottom of the Sahara Desert should be the ordinary surface and abundant water resources. The former is easier to understand. Under all the special landforms today, they are actually supported by the most "simple" surface. As for the abundant water resources, many people may not want to believe it.

However, as early as the 1950s, countries in the Sahara Desert discovered a large amount of groundwater when they were exploring oil resources. Not only that, geologists from various countries have also found that the content of these groundwater can even be compared with the desert above the surface.

To this end, more and more countries have specially proposed giant projects to draw water from the desert. Take Libya as an example, they have been building this huge artificial underground river project since 1984. By 1991, after the completion of the first phase of the project, the water problem for residents in Tripoli, the capital of Libya, had been completely resolved.

How to manage deserts

For the discovery of groundwater resources in the desert, the local Saharan residents are naturally very happy. But now that water resources have been discovered, countries in the Sahara Desert should think about how to use groundwater resources to improve the overall environment of the Sahara Desert. If the environment can be changed, the sustainable development of the future can naturally become a reality.

In this matter, our country has done a very good job. In particular, the sandstorms that ravaged the north from the 1990s to the early 2000s are no longer in the sight of Chinese people. This is a signal that the environment has been successfully improved.

When controlling deserts, we use the method of layer-by-layer advancement to reduce the impact of land desertification by one meter every day. As long as you continue to persist, the desert will inevitably become an oasis eventually. If countries in the Sahara Desert can do this, environmental change is just around the corner.

In addition, as long as the countries affected by the Sahara Desert, in fact, can join together to deal with the harsh changes in the environment. For example, Brazil and Paraguay in South America have jointly agreed to build the Itaipu hydropower station, which has greatly improved the electricity consumption of residents in both countries.

Therefore, as long as countries such as Egypt, Libya, Algeria, and Mauritania in the Sahara Desert are willing to unite to build their own desert defense line, and finally push the desert defense line to the depths of the desert, the Sahara Desert will definitely have a chance to happen. Change.

"There is nothing difficult in the world, only those who have a heart", although the possibility of successfully governing the Sahara Desert is relatively low, but if you choose to compromise with the environment before you try, our future generations can only be like us today, day after day. to withstand the effects of harsh environments. Under such circumstances, human beings even have problems with their survival, so how can we talk about social development?