Talk:Tabernas Desert

formation?
What's missing is a history of its formation. I've heard this desert is only about 5 or 6 centuries old - made not of natural causes - but mismanagement from human beings. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.126.216.229 (talk) 21:19, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

(semi-)Deserts and (semi-)Arid climates
Unfortunately in many Wikipedia pages and also in many books there is a confusion between Deserts and Arid climates.

Deserts are landscapes with few vegetation

while Arid climates define areas with few precipitation or a ratio "Precipitation/Temperature" low or an evapotranspiration superior to the precipitation (according to the different definitions). What is sure is that precipitation is always a parameter to define arid climates.

So desert areas and arid areas do not coincide :

For instance in Iceland there is a desert (and I am not talking of an ice desert but of a true desert with very few vegetation, which consists of a mountainous lava desert, see for instance this image with very ice or snow and no vegetation : http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Islande_Sprengisandur_d%C3%A9sert_sol.jpg). However this TRUE DESERT has a cold oceanic HUMID CLIMATE with annual average precipitation above 50 cm and a mean annual temperature of about 5°C.

On the other hand you have areas with arid or semi-arid climates but with a dense vegetation on the ground which prevents these areas to be called deserts. This is the case of all the "oases" in the broadest meaning : for instance the Nile river banks are the greatest oasis of Egypt. The climate in the Okavango delta region is semi-arid (the dry season lasts about 7-8 months) but the region is clearly a savanna woodlands area, and not a semi-desert (and even less a desert) because the Okavango river feeds this region.

So Desert and Arid aren't synonymous because they do not refer to the same thing : the former is linked to the vegetation while the latter to the precipitation Carlo Colussi (talk) 16:54, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

There are not big areas in Spain where the mean annual rainfall is below 200 mm. See http://www.aemet.es/documentos/es/conocermas/publicaciones/Atlas-climatologico/Atlas.pdf, Fig. 69 page 67 /80 where the only areas with less than 200 mm in European Spain are two very small ones (see the orange-red areas on the map) : a) the tip of the Cabo de Gata, and b) another very small area around the Almeria airport. Apparently the more arid region known in Spain is at the Faro del Cabo de Gata (36°43'18.8 N, 2°11'34.69" W) where, during the period 1961-1990, an average annual rainfall of 156 mm (6.1 in) was recorded.

The Tabernas (semi-)desert receives about over 200 mm (see http://www.eeza.csic.es/eeza/documentos/Canton%20et%20al%202003-Geoderma.pdf] (Soil–geomorphology relations in gypsiferous materials of the Tabernas Desert (Almerıa, SE Spain), pages 1 & 4/30).