Far from being barren wastelands, deserts are biologically rich habitats with a vast array of animals and plants that have adapted to the harsh conditions there. Some deserts are among the planet ...

This story appears in the October 2009 issue of National Geographic magazine. An ancient wind is coming up from a place called deep time. The Sahara strikes us as an eternal inferno of dunes and ...

It's hard to imagine that global warming would have much effect on the world's already hot deserts. But even small changes in temperature or precipitation could drastically impact plants and ...