The Gibson Desert is a large desert in

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to t ...

, largely in an almost "pristine" state. It is about in size, making it the fifth largest desert in Australia, after the Great Victoria, Great Sandy, Tanami and Simpson deserts. The Gibson Desert is both an interim Australian bioregion and desert

ecoregion An ecoregion (ecological region) or ecozone (ecological zone) is an ecologically and geographically defined area that is smaller than a bioregion, which in turn is smaller than a biogeographic realm. Ecoregions cover relatively large areas of ...

Location and description

The Gibson Desert is located between the saline

Kumpupintil Lake Kumpupintil Lake (pronounced ''goom-bu-pin-dil''), formerly known as Lake Disappointment, is an endorheic salt lake located in the Little Sandy Desert, east of the Pilbara region of Western Australia. Description Kumpupintil Lake is about lon ...

and Lake Macdonald along the Tropic of Capricorn, south of the Great Sandy Desert, east of the

Little Sandy Desert The Little Sandy Desert (LSD) is a desert region in the state of Western Australia, lying to the east of the Pilbara and north of the Gascoyne regions. It is part of the Western Desert cultural region, and was declared an interim Australian ...

, and north of the

Great Victoria Desert The Great Victoria Desert is a sparsely populated desert ecoregion and interim Australian bioregion in Western Australia and South Australia. History In 1875, British-born Australian explorer Ernest Giles became the first European to cros ...

. The altitude rises to just above in places. As noted by early Australian explorers such as

Ernest Giles William Ernest Powell Giles (20 July 1835 – 13 November 1897), best known as Ernest Giles, was an Australian explorer who led five major expeditions to parts of South Australia and Western Australia. Early life Ernest Giles was born in Bri ...

large portions of the desert are characterized by gravel-covered terrains covered in thin desert grasses and it also contains extensive areas of undulating red sand plains and dunefields, low rocky/gravelly ridges and substantial upland portions with a high degree of

laterite Laterite is both a soil and a rock type rich in iron and aluminium and is commonly considered to have formed in hot and wet tropical areas. Nearly all laterites are of rusty-red coloration, because of high iron oxide content. They develop by ...

formation. The sandy soil of the lateritic ''buckshot'' plains is rich in iron. Several isolated salt-water lakes occur in the centre of the region and to the southwest a system of small lakes follow paleo-drainage features. Groundwater sources include portions of the Officer Basin and Canning Basin.

Climate

Rainfall Rain is water droplets that have condensed from atmospheric water vapor and then fall under gravity. Rain is a major component of the water cycle and is responsible for depositing most of the fresh water on the Earth. It provides water f ...

in the Gibson Desert ranges from annually, while evaporation rates are in the range of per year. The climate is generally hot; summer maximum temperatures rise above whilst in winter the maximum may fall to and minimum winter temperatures dip to .Great Victoria and Gibson Deserts, Western Australia
fro

by Michael Thompson, verified 2006-01-23.

Name

The Gibson Desert was named by explorer Ernest Giles after a member of his party, Alfred Gibson, who became lost and presumably died in this desert during an expedition in 1874.

Indigenous habitation

In much of the region, especially the drier western portion, the majority of people living in the area are

Indigenous Australians Indigenous Australians or Australian First Nations are people with familial heritage from, and membership in, the ethnic groups that lived in Australia before British colonisation. They consist of two distinct groups: the Aboriginal peoples ...

. In 1984, due to a severe

drought A drought is defined as drier than normal conditions.Douville, H., K. Raghavan, J. Renwick, R.P. Allan, P.A. Arias, M. Barlow, R. Cerezo-Mota, A. Cherchi, T.Y. Gan, J. Gergis, D. Jiang, A. Khan, W. Pokam Mba, D. Rosenfeld, J. Tierney, an ...

which had dried up all of the springs and depleted the bush foods, a group of the Pintupi people who were living a traditional semi- nomadic desert-dwelling life, walked out of a remote wilderness in the central-eastern portion of the Gibson Desert (northeast of Warburton) and made contact for the first time with mainstream Australian society. They are believed to have been perhaps the last uncontacted tribe in Australia. On the eastern margin of the region, population centres (which include people of European descent) include Warburton,

Mantamaru Mantamaru (also referred to as Jameson) is a medium-sized Aboriginal community, located in the Goldfields–Esperance region of Western Australia, within the Shire of Ngaanyatjarraku. Native title The community is located within the determ ...

and

Warakurna Warakurna is a large Aboriginal community, located in the Goldfields-Esperance region of Western Australia, within the Shire of Ngaanyatjarraku and is situated on the Great Central Road (part of the Outback Way ultimately connecting Perth t ...

. Young Indigenous adults from the Gibson Desert region work in the Wilurarra Creative programs to maintain and develop their culture.Wilurarra Creative
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References

External links

Gibson Desert 1997
; a photo album of the Gibson Desert by Stuart Jackson, Verified 2006-01-23
Across Australia Motorbike Tour