Registan Desert EarthCache
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The Rigestan Desert, along the country's southern border, occupies roughly one-quarter of the southwestern plateau. Sand ridges and dunes alternate with wide desert plains devoid of vegetation.
This Earth Cache is located on the Northern Ridge of the Registan Desert, near the Arghistan River, where Rte Molson Ice begins south into the desert.
Rigestan, also spelled Registan, (Persian: “country of sand”), arid plateau region in southwestern Afghanistan. Rigestan is, for the greater part, a sandy desert with ridges and small, isolated hills of red sand. The sand ridges and dunes, reaching heights of between 50 and 100 feet (15 and 30 m), alternate with windblown sand-covered planes, devoid of vegetation and changing in some parts into barren gravel and clay. In the local language the Rigestan is often called the chol (“desert”). Some gypsum is mined at Galeh Chad, and Baluchi and Pashtun nomads, herders of sheep, goats, and camels, use portions of the Rigestan near the Helmand and Arghandab rivers as winter pasture.
The United Nations Environment Programmed team reports that “up to 100 villages have been submerged by windblown dust and sand.” In the country’s northwest, sand dunes are moving onto agricultural land, their path cleared by the loss of stabilizing vegetation from firewood gathering and overgrazing. The UNEP team observed sand dunes nearly 50 feet (15 meters) high blocking roads, forcing residents to establish new routes.
Our early twenty-first century civilization is being squeezed between advancing deserts and rising seas. Measured by the land area that can support human habitation, the earth is shrinking. Mounting population densities, once generated solely by the addition of over 70 million people per year, are now also fueled by the relentless advance of deserts and the rise in sea level.
All the countries in central Asia--Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan--are losing land to desertification. Kazakhstan, site of the vast Soviet Virgin Lands Project, has abandoned nearly half of its cropland since 1980.
Kutch sheath-tailed bats can be found in abundance in the Registan-Sandy Desert. The bats are often captured by locals for their fat, which is thought to have medicinal value.
To successfully log this cache you must:
1. Its requested that you take a photo of YOU AND YOUR GPS in the Registan Desert or neighboring provinces ensuring you use OPSEC.
2. Answer the three questions that are listed below:
- Which Afghan province(s) does the Registan Desert border?
- In feet, how high do the red sand hills range and grow to?
- What is the approximate total area of the Registan Desert in square kilometres?
Please post your picture on the cache page and E-mail your answers to cache owner. Any answers posted in the cache log will be deleted.
ANY LOGS THAT DO NOT MEET THESE REQUIREMENTS WILL BE DELETED.
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(Decrypt)
Ab uvagf ninvynoyr.