How deep is the Sahara Desert? If you hollowed out the desert sand, what would you see?

After millions of years of evolution, human beings have become the well-deserved world hegemons on the earth today. When facing any other creature, human beings can win through their own wisdom and technological crystallization. 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 so far.

Take the Sahara Desert as an example. As the largest desert in the world, the horror of the Sahara Desert is absolutely well known. Even if they are fully prepared, no one is willing to take the initiative 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, but if we hollowed out the sand of the Sahara Desert, what would it look like 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 it is named Sahara is mainly due to the transliteration of Arabic. It's just that at that time, people only had a general impression of the Sahara: maybe they couldn't complete this journey in a lifetime.

In the current mainstream understanding 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. At that time, the herbivores living in the Sahara were extremely diverse and had no natural enemies. Under such circumstances, the Sahara, which should have been called grassland, gradually developed along the direction of land desertification.

Many people may be wondering, can the environment of a certain area undergo such drastic changes just by eating grass? This is too unrealistic. What's more, the area of ​​the Sahara Desert is as high as 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 animal's consumption of grass is merely an incentive. When these creatures eat food recklessly and have an impact on the environment, the climate in the Sahara will also be affected to a certain extent. In the subsequent development process, organisms will 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 wild rabbits in Australia has become a headache for countless Australians. But who would have imagined that at the beginning, the number of these rabbits was only a few dozen. Millions of years ago, perhaps the Sahara region experienced such a disaster.

It's just that apart from the influence of biology and climate, the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has actually proposed another possibility. Perhaps about 7 million to 10 million years ago, the Sahara Desert appeared on the earth. The reason for the formation is mainly due to the shrinkage of the Tethys Sea, which led to a sharp decline in water resources in the Sahara Desert and triggered subsequent adverse changes.

Regarding this possibility, there are many people who agree with and oppose it, but no matter what the reason is, it can actually prove that the Sahara Desert was never what it is today a million years ago. As for what changes will happen in the future, it depends on what choices we humans will make in the development of the environment.

Depths of the Sahara Desert

Since the Sahara Desert is so vast, how deep is it? If it only stays on the superficial layer, it is impossible for it to 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 the study of modern desert geology, scientists generally divide deserts into four types: rocky deserts, gravel deserts, muddy deserts, and deserts. Among these four types, the last type of desert is the most orthodox type of desert, which is the most common desert picture we see on TV, while the other three types are all extensions of deserts.

First of all, from the perspective of rocky desert, this actually refers to a kind of mountainous desert, and most of the entire desert is made of rocks. In the central part of the Sahara and the higher-lying areas in the east, the rocky desert has become the most important part of the entire desert.

Compared with other regions, the overall depth of the rock desert is not outstanding, with an average of only a dozen meters. It's just that because of the existence of rocks, this is also the area with the most animal species in the Sahara Desert.

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

Since it belongs to the transitional stage, the depth of the gravel desert is naturally in the middle reaches of the entire Sahara Desert. If we regard the subterranean composition of the Sahara as a slope of a hill, then the location of the gravel desert happens to be 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-lying, mud deserts may appear. The depth of desert in this area is generally between rocky desert and gravel desert.

The Lop Nur area, which our people are more familiar with, is actually the most typical muddy desert terrain. Although the overall environment is relatively dangerous, due to the existence of more minerals, such areas generally have very rich potassium salt reserves. 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, which is 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, all kinds of extreme environmental or geological conditions are possible. As long as there is the slightest negligence, people are likely to die.

In this area, the depth of the desert can even reach hundreds of meters. Because of this, people call the Sahara Desert the ocean of deserts, without any exaggeration. And even if the whole is averaged, the depth of the desert is close to 100 meters. Human beings want to govern the environment here, the degree of difficulty is by no means 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 a hypothesis for this, assuming that the desert or a certain area of ​​the desert can be hollowed out, what kind of scene will humans eventually see?

Looking at the deserts of the countries in the Middle East, there are often a lot of oil resources deep in the deserts, so is the same in the Sahara Desert? In fact, the formation of oil resources has nothing to do with deserts. According to the most widely known theory of bio-oil formation today, if there is a large amount of oil resources in a certain area, 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 meets the conditions, because the desert is so large, the oil resources that people have found in the Sahara Desert so far are still very limited. Even the largest oil field discovered in the northern part of the Sahara desert, the Hasi Mesaoud oil field, is at the bottom of the world's top ten oil fields.

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

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

To this end, more and more countries have specifically proposed giant projects to draw water from the desert. Taking 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 of residents in Tripoli, the capital of Libya, had been completely solved.

How to manage the desert

For the discovery of groundwater resources in the desert, the local residents of the Sahara are naturally very happy. But now that water resources have been discovered, countries located 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, future sustainable development 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 beginning of this century are no longer visible to Chinese people. This is a signal that the environment has been successfully improved.

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

In addition, as long as the countries affected by the Sahara Desert can actually unite to deal with the harsh changes in the environment. For example, Brazil in South America once agreed with Paraguay 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 together to jointly build a desert defense line within their own country, and finally push the desert defense line deep into the desert, the Sahara Desert will definitely have a chance to happen. Change.

"There is nothing difficult in the world, as long as there is a heart." Although the possibility of successfully governing the Sahara Desert is relatively low, if we choose to compromise with the environment before trying, our future generations will only be the same as we are today, day after day withstand the impact of harsh environments. Under such circumstances, human beings have problems even in survival, so how can we talk about social development?