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the abiotic factors consist of rain, air, water, and snow.

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An Biotic Factors is any living component that affects another organism.

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most dangers are the animals there, the environment, and the amount of drinking water.

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They are found at the top and bottom of the world.This is because they are furthest from the equator. these consist of the north pole and Antarctica.

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plants consist of hiar grass and pearl wart because they can adapt to the weather in the cold desert. they are found in the water.

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Big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentate) is one of the most common plants of the cold desert, thriving in elevations of 4,000 to 10,000 feet. The plant prefers dry plains and rocky areas with deep soil. Big sagebrush is a perennial shrub that achieves a mature height of 2 to 7 feet with a stout trunk and several upward growing side branches. The evergreen foliage is 1/4 to 2 inches long with three or five lobes at the tips. The plant blooms with thick clusters of small yellow flowers in late summer. The flowers contain tiny black seeds. Big sagebrush is an important winter browsing plant for a variety of wildlife species including sage grouse, small mammals, mule deer and domestic livestock.

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Deserts occupy about one-fifth of the total earth's surface, and the coldest deserts lie near the Arctic. Cold deserts have lots of snow, and it is rarely warm enough for plants to grow. Whatever plants grow there can do so in the summer and at the start of spring, when it is a little warmer than...

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one of the animals in the cold desert is a arctic fox they have the warmest pelt of any animal found in the arctic region. this allows them to survive in weather under -70 degrees Celsius. most of the animals are fish.

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Although it seems like an oxymoron, there are several regions in the world that could be classified as cold deserts. The best known of these is Antarctica. There are also cold desert biomes located in Greenland and the Nearctic area. These deserts have frigid winters with high rainfall and snowfall and wet, relatively ...

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The land and water features are glaciers caves mountains and lakes.

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What is distinctive about Antarctica's landscape?

Cold facts

Antarctica is unique among the continents for being almost totally covered by glacier ice. Although this ice cover in its entirety is often referred to as a single ice sheet (the Antarctic Ice Sheet), there are in fact two major areas of ice which differ from each other in both their physical characteristics and history: the East and West Antarctic Ice Sheets. The East Antarctic Ice Sheet is both larger and thicker than the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, as well as being much older.

The continent itself is not centred over the South Pole, and instead, the greater portion of Antarctica lies within the Eastern Hemisphere (as defined by the Prime Meridian). The West Antarctic Ice Sheet occupies a smaller area of land within the Western Hemisphere and is flanked by the Weddell Sea on one side and the Ross Sea on the other. The Transantarctic Mountains extend across the continent forming a convenient physical boundary to demarcate East Antarctica (or Greater Antarctica) from West Antarctica (or Lesser Antarctica). Most of Antarctica is south of the Antarctic Circle, with the exception of parts of the East Antarctic coastline and the Antarctic Peninsula which extends northwards from West Antarctica to about 63°S.

Islands and ice shelves

In addition to the continental land mass, Antarctica has several large and small islands; for example, the South Shetland Islands just north of the Antarctic Peninsula. Some of Antarctica's islands are permanently linked to the mainland by ice, whereas others are connected only seasonally in step with the pattern of sea ice expansion and retreat. Much of the continent's coastline is fringed by ice shelves. The largest of these are the Ross Ice Shelf in the Ross Sea and the Ronne Ice Shelf in the Weddell Sea. Each of these ice shelves cover an area greater than the British Isles.

The highest, coldest and driest continent

The Transantarctic range contains many peaks above 4000m; however, the highest mountain in Antarctica, Mt Vinson, is part of the Ellsworth Mountains located in the western area of the continent near the Antarctic Peninsula. Mt Vinson reaches 4892m above sea level - a little higher than Mont Blanc in the European Alps.

While Antarctica does have high mountains, it is not because of its mountains that it has the distinction of being 'the highest continent on Earth': it is because of the thickness of its ice sheets. Due to this ice cover, Antarctica has the highest average surface elevation of all the continents at around 2000m above sea level (for comparison, the highest peak in the British Isles, Ben Nevis in Scotland, is 1343m); yet in many places the ice surface is much higher than this. In the region of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet known as Dome A the surface elevation is over 4000m. The height of the ice surface is of course the result of both the elevation of the underlying bedrock and the thickness of the ice sheet; and both of these factors vary across the continent for reasons that are discussed in Ice Sheets and Glaciation. In East Antarctica, the ice sheet is thicker and rests on bedrock that is above sea level in most places, whereas in the west the ice is not as thick and much of the underlying bedrock is below sea level.

In addition to being the highest continent, Antarctica is also distinctive for being the coldest and the driest. Its climatic characteristics are described and explained in Key Factors Behind Antarctica's Climate; although some background is needed here as part of the introduction to the physical landscape. It comes as no surprise that Antarctica is coldest given its geographical position; yet it may at first seem surprising that it is also the driest. Despite being covered in snow and ice, mean annual precipitation is very low, and the climate can be described as a polar desert. Rather than being the result of high levels of snowfall, the vast Antarctic ice sheets exist because the cold temperature year round prevents what little snow and frost that accumulates from melting - hence the ice sheets have been able to build up from small annual inputs of ice crystals over a very long period of time.

Very little of the continent and its islands are free of glacier ice (0.32%), and these ice-free areas owe their existence to specific local-scale factors. For example, there are high mountain peaks that protrude above the ice sheets, like islands in a sea of ice, that are termed nunataks. High winds and steep slopes prevent snow and ice from accumulating on parts of these mountains.

Dry Valleys

Dry Valleys are another intriguing type of landscape found in Antarctica. These are found in high altitude areas of extreme aridity. Good examples can be found in the Victoria Land region near the McMurdo research station.

Some low lying coastal areas of Antarctica, particularly along the Peninsula, have micro-climate and topographic conditions which cause enough melting during the austral summer to allow some land to remain free of glaciers.

For more information about Antarctica's physical features.
Antarctica Factsheet: Geographical Statistics

Student activity 1

Use an atlas, or the links listed below, to annotate a base map of Antarctica to show the continent's principal areas and physical features. Download and print the base map.

Links for maps of Antarctica:

On your base map, identify and label the following features and places:

Student activity 2

Add contour lines to your existing base map (or a second base map), using an atlas or the weblinks provided. These do not need to be exact. Use 1000m or 500m intervals. Where is the ice surface highest?

Now answer the three questions below:

Question 1

Add a scale bar to your map. Estimate what is the nearest distance to South America from the Antarctic Peninsula.

Question 2

Estimate the width of Antarctica from its coastline at 90°W to the opposite coastline at 90°E. (Hint: estimate the degrees of latitude between the two positions and convert degrees to nautical miles and then nautical miles to kilometres) (1 degree of latitude = 60 minutes, 1 minute = 1 nautical mile, 1 nautical mile = 1.852 km)

Question 3

Estimate the distance along the Prime Meridian from London to the edge of the ice shelf (Fimbul Ice Shelf) extending from the coast of Queen Maud Land.

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Key physical features - Discovering Antarctica

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What is distinctive about Antarctica's landscape?

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the main food scource in the cold desert the Animals and plants nd the water is not drinkable in the cold desert because it is salt water. The animals can mostly be found on land or in water. The plants can be found
on the land

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Instructions: Move your mouse over the picture and learn more about the different participants in this ocean food web.

This biome is an ocean shore environment. The animals that live here find their food in the ocean. Some of the top predators go onto the land to rest or reproduce, but the food that they eat is in the icy waters. TheArctic is the area around the North Pole while the Antarctic is the area around the South Pole.

Plant plankton are eaten by small crustaceans called krill; krill are eaten by fish; fish are eaten by seals and seals are eaten by whales.

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A food web in a cold desert biome - an ocean shore environment where the animals find their food in the ocean and some of the top predators go onto the land to rest or reproduce, but the food that they eat is in the icy waters

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the weather conditions in the cold desert are very difficult for any form of life to survive in. The temperature are very low year round and catabian winds can cause snowstorms that last days to weeks.

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Cold Desert

Cold deserts are characterized by cold winters with snowfall and high overall rainfall throughout the winter and occasionally over the summer. They occur in the Antarctic, Greenland and the Nearctic realm.

Human Impact
There is no direct human impact that specifies to threatening a particular type of desert, but the entire desert biome is being effected by humans. Humans are drilling all over deserts. The desert population rises along with the demand for water. The water that animals once drank is being drilled and drained for industries, agriculture, and people. Global warming is melting the glaciers in the cold deserts to melt.

Weather
Cold deserts have short, moist, and quite warm summers with fairly long, cold winters. The average winter is -2 to 4° C and the average summer is 21-26° C. In the winter, a cold desert receives quite a bit of snow. The average yearly precipitation ranges from 15-26 cm. Yearly precipitation has reached a maximum of 46 cm and a minimum of 9 cm. Spring rainfall usually falls heaviest in April or May. In some areas, rainfall can also be heavy in autumn.

Plant heights vary between 15 cm and 122 cm, depending on the area. Most plants shed their leaves and have spiny leaves. Ground cover, like lichens are found to either cover most of the ground, or be widely scattered. Plants found in a cold desert include grasses, shadscale and camel's thorn.

Animals
Common cold desert animals are jack rabbits, kangaroo rats, kangaroo mice, pocket mice, grasshopper mice, and antelope ground squirrels. In some areas, population density of these animals can range from 14-41 individuals per hectare. Animals like the badger, kit fox, coyote, and all animals except jack rabbits are burrowers, as in they live in a small hole or tunnel that they dug in the winter. Having grown a thick fur coat, deer are found in cold deserts only in the winter. They migrate in the summer, as they have shed their fur coat. Gazelles, jack rabbits, wolves, viper snakes, and lizards are few examples of animals who are active in the early morning but seek shelter during the hottest part of the day, either in burrows or in the shade of plants.

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Cold deserts are characterized by cold winters with snowfall and high overall rainfall throughout the winter and occasionally over the summer. They occur in the Antarctic, Greenland and the Nearctic realm. Plant heights vary between 15 cm and 122 cm, depending on the area. Most plants shed their leaves and have spiny leaves.