The Namib Desert

Credit: Jeff Schmaltz; MODIS team; NASA, Posted on: Thursday, 15 February 2007, 07:31 CST Download full size image

Namibia is a country on the Atlantic coast of Africa. Probably Nambia's most famous geographic feature is the Namib Desert, which the country is named for. The Namib Desert stretches for 1000 miles of Namibia's coast, and is anywhere from 30 to 100 miles in width. This desert reaches partially into Namibia's neighbor of Angola. This image, acquired by the MODIS on the Aqua satellite, shows the desert on February 2, 2007.

The Namib Desert is interesting because of its age - it has stayed arid, or semi-arid for the 80 million years. It has some unique plants and animals, though it is largely unpopulated. The desert's dune sea, which contains the tallest sand dunes in the world, holds interest for geologists studying the complexity and regularity of its patterns.

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