Programme 5: Deserts
A third of the land on our planet is desert. Deserts can be found on every continent and appear lifeless from space. A closer look reveals a very different picture.

Hot and cold, snowy and windy, deserts are united in their lack of rain. Sand dunes and rock formations characterize deserts from Mongolia’s Gobi Desert  to the Nambib-Naukluft National Park in Namibia. Saharan sandstorms blow gusts nearly one-mile high and rivers run for one single day at a time. In Death Valley, California, flowers bloom briefly, and elsewhere, plagues of desert locusts 40-miles wide by 100-miles long can wreak havoc on the landscape, but both events may only occur once in every 30 years.

The life forms that survive in these conditions are as remarkable as the land masses themselves. The survival mechanisms for all of life varies as extensively as the deserts’ climates. In the Gobi, wild Bactarian camels eat snow to substitute for water. Guanacos in the Atacama in Chile survive by licking dew off cactus spines. It is in these regions that elephants endure a painstaking trek for food in the dunes and that desert lions prey on wandering oryx.

Life in the desert is anything but barren, and Planet Earth shows these ephemeral regions in their glory and their hardships.

Read more Planet Earth episode guides