Word: semidesert
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...switch any runaways to an upgrade. Once off the hill and on a tamer grade, the 91-mile railroad winds through a palm-tufted savannah, a rocky badlands where flash floods can fill dusty ravines with ten feet of water in a few minutes, and finally a sandy semidesert to the Caroni river...
South of Los Angeles and inland from Manhattan Beach is a flat suburban area that was once semidesert. It had no surface water, but under its tight clay subsoil lay water-saturated gravel. When real-estate boomers discovered this treasure, they drilled well after well, and the well water, used recklessly, made the land salable for home sites and industries. Now the "west basin," as the geologists call it, has oil refineries and factories, as well as 500,000 people. But its underground water is almost gone. The water table is some 50 to 60 ft. below sea level...
...climate greatly limit Russian agriculture. Corn is barred to all of north and central Russia by the cold, to most of the south by lack of rainfall. The Russian soil, starting at the city of Astrakhan at the mouth of the Volga and proceeding northwest, is at first semidesert, then improves to chestnut soil (dark brown soil), then to rich chernozem (fertile black soil), and finally declines to thin podsols (grey, leached, acid soil) - see map. Russia's huge long swatch of chernozem is the biggest in the world, but most of it lies north of the latitude...
Next step is to watch the weather and its effect on the young hoppers. The migratory species are semidesert insects that thrive best under dry conditions; a cold rain or a late frost can wipe them out. So can their natural enemies (other insects, birds, etc.)-which the Government's experts keep track...
...border. But last year's grasshoppers laid their eggs in the soil of many western and midwestern states. What the young hoppers need is a good long spell of dry weather to nurse them along to destructive maturity. The grasshoppers that do the most damage are primarily a semidesert species. Wet weather blights them in youth...