These desert trivia questions run in four rounds: what makes a desert, rock, sand and wind, water, salt and named deserts, and the plants, animals and travelers that live with little rain.
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Trivia questions about the desert, hot and cold
What makes a desert asks the definitions, from hyperarid land to the cold deserts of Central Asia. Rock, sand and wind has ergs, seif dunes, desert varnish and dust that travels 6,000 kilometers. Water, salt and named deserts visits the Atacama, the Sahara and Death Valley.
For a science class or a road trip
Each round plays on its own, and the question sheet prints with a separate answer key. Plants, animals and travelers has the animals: toads that wait underground for heavy rain, shrimps that dry out and revive, and burrows that stay near 30 degrees Celsius.
Questions and answers
What are three easy desert trivia questions to start with?
What do many desert plants carry to deter animals? What strains desert rocks until they break? Around what share of desert is sand? The answers are spines, large swings of temperature between day and night, and 20 percent.
Is the Sahara the largest desert in this pack?
The pack does not rank the deserts; other packs of the site ask the largest hot desert. It asks the aquifer under the Sahara, how hot its days get and what its stony plains are called.
When and where were the answers checked?
Each answer was checked on October 3, 2026 against the English Wikipedia article Desert, the page each question links. Measurements are given in metric and in American units where the article gives both.
Arid and semi-arid land together make up about how much of all land?Answer: One-third. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
Below which yearly total of rain and snow is a place generally counted as a desert?Answer: 250 millimeters (10 inches). Source: Wikipedia: Desert
By which other name are cold deserts sometimes known?Answer: Temperate deserts. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
Hyperarid deserts receive less than how much rainfall a year?Answer: 25 millimeters (1 inch). Source: Wikipedia: Desert
In which part of the world are the largest cold deserts found?Answer: Central Asia. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
In which sense was the word desert often used in English before the 20th century?Answer: An unpopulated area. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
The North Slope of which range in Alaska is often classified as a cold desert?Answer: The Brooks Range. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
The Taklamakan Desert is dry because which range blocks its rain?Answer: The Himalayas. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
Trade wind deserts occur on either side of which latitudes?Answer: The horse latitudes. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
Tucson, Arizona, receives about 300 millimeters of rain a year. About how much water could evaporate there in a year?Answer: 2,500 millimeters (98 inches). Source: Wikipedia: Desert
What are former desert areas called that now lie in environments that are not arid?Answer: Paleodeserts. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
What are semi-deserts called when they are clad in grass?Answer: Steppes. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
What are the dry polar regions sometimes called?Answer: Cold deserts. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
Who divided the desert regions of the Earth into three categories in 1961?Answer: Peveril Meigs. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
Rock, sand and wind 18
Above which wind speed do small ripples form on a sheet of sand?Answer: 24 kilometers an hour (15 miles an hour). Source: Wikipedia: Desert
Across the world, around what share of desert is sand?Answer: 20 percent. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
At about which angle does loose dry sand slip down the lee slope of a dune?Answer: 32 degrees. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
At White Sands in New Mexico, gypsum left by evaporating water forms crystals known as what?Answer: Selenite. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
How far can the trade winds carry the dust of a storm?Answer: Up to 6,000 kilometers. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
How high can the tallest type of dune reach?Answer: 500 meters (1,600 feet). Source: Wikipedia: Desert
Only particles below which diameter can stay suspended in the air?Answer: 0.1 millimeters. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
To which height can the fine particles of a dust storm be lifted?Answer: 6 kilometers. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
Weathering by heat and cold stops at a critical size, which sets the smallest grain of sand. What is that size?Answer: About 0.5 millimeters. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
What are extensive areas of sand dunes known as?Answer: Sand seas or ergs. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
What are the flat, stony plains of the desert called in Australia?Answer: Gibber plains. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
What are the flat, stony plains of the desert called in the western Sahara?Answer: Reg. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
What is formed where smooth stones cover the surface of a desert plain like a mosaic?Answer: A desert pavement. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
What is the process called in which grains of sand are picked up and blown along by a strong wind?Answer: Saltation. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
What is the shiny brown coating called that forms on desert stones?Answer: Desert varnish. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
What strains desert rocks until they break into pieces?Answer: Large swings of temperature between day and night. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
Which long, linear dunes may form where winds blow regularly from two directions?Answer: Seif dunes. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
Which river has cut canyons over a mile deep through the high desert floor?Answer: The Colorado. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
Water, salt and named deserts 14
Evidence suggests that the Atacama may have had no significant rainfall between which years?Answer: 1570 and 1971. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
How much precipitation falls on average each year in the Chilean region of Antofagasta?Answer: 1 millimeter. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
Salt caravans have long traveled between Timbuktu and which place in the interior?Answer: Taoudenni. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
What are the dry stream channels that wind across the desert called?Answer: Arroyos or wadis. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
What did the 20-mule teams haul from Death Valley to the nearest railway?Answer: Borax. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
What is the flat area of clay, silt or sand left by a temporary desert lake called?Answer: A playa. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
Which aquifer system under the Sahara is the largest known accumulation of fossil water?Answer: The Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
Which mineral salt has been mined in the Atacama Desert since around 1850?Answer: Sodium nitrate. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
Which oasis in Egypt, 150 kilometers long, is the largest in the Libyan Desert?Answer: Kharga Oasis. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
Which people built and kept up over 500 miles of large canals in the desert?Answer: The Hohokam. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
Which strong winds evaporate even ice in the snowless valleys of Antarctica?Answer: Katabatic winds. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
Which valley in California, with average rainfall of just 3 inches a year, is a modern example of desert farming?Answer: The Imperial Valley. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
Which valleys of Antarctica almost never get snow?Answer: The Dry Valleys. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
Winds have piled a sea of sand around the pole of which neighbor of the Earth?Answer: Mars. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
Plants, animals and travelers 13
At which temperature are lizards prostrated by heat?Answer: 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit). Source: Wikipedia: Desert
Burrows deeper than 50 centimeters stay at about which temperature, whatever the heat outside?Answer: 30 to 32 degrees Celsius (86 to 90 degrees Fahrenheit). Source: Wikipedia: Desert
Fairy shrimps and tadpole shrimps can lose up to how much of their bodyweight and revive when it rains?Answer: 92 percent. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
Some desert plants use crassulacean acid metabolism. When do they open their stomata?Answer: During the night. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
To which temperature can the air rise in the heat of the day in the Sahara?Answer: 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit). Source: Wikipedia: Desert
What are animals adapted to live in deserts called?Answer: Xerocoles. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
What do many desert plants carry to deter animals from eating them?Answer: Spines. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
What is the living crust of small fungi and microscopic plants on the desert surface called?Answer: Cryptobiotic soil. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
What is the trigger for desert toads to come out of the ground and gather at a pool?Answer: Heavy rain. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
Where are the so-called ocean deserts mostly found?Answer: At the centers of gyres. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
Which food yields the most water when a gram of it is oxidized in the body: 1.07 grams?Answer: Fat. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
Which traveler of the early 20th century became an expert on the Arabian desert and advised the British government?Answer: Gertrude Bell. Source: Wikipedia: Desert
Who wrote Travels in Arabia Deserta, published in 1888?Answer: Charles Montagu Doughty. Source: Wikipedia: Desert