The Sahel & Desertification
This semi-arid belt stretches across northern Africa between the Sahara Desert and tropical savannas.
What is the Sahel
In 1453, Sultan Mehmed II captured this city, ending the Byzantine Empire and establishing Istanbul.
What is Constantinople
This climate zone sits near the equator and stays warm all year due to direct, year-round sunlight.
What is the tropical zone
This is the clearing or cutting down of forests by humans.
Because water and grass are hard to find in the desert, the Bedouin people developed this lifestyle of constantly moving from place to place.
What is a nomadic lifestyle?
Over 20 African nations launched this initiative to plant an 8,000-kilometer barrier of trees from Senegal to Djibouti.
What is the Great Green Wall Initiative
Capturing this city in 1534 gave the Ottoman Empire control over river trade routes leading to the Persian Gulf.
What is Baghdad.
Out of a travel blog, a social media ad, or a scientific study using satellite maps, this is the most reliable source for studying how a dam affects Egyptian farm water levels.
What is a scientific study using satellite maps and river measurements over five years?
As tectonic plates pull apart in East Africa, the ground sinks downward to create this giant trench thousands of miles long.
What is the Great Rift Valley?
Bedouin tents are woven from the wool of camels, sheep, or goats, which keeps the inside dry when it does this weather event.
Rain
Along with dry weather, these two human activities combine to cause desertification in the Sahel.
What is letting livestock eat too much grass and cutting down trees for firewood
This pattern remained the same in Mesopotamia from ancient times through the Ottoman Empire regarding where most people lived.
What is living near the rivers because the dry region required freshwater and good soil for farming?
Since the 1960s, this major freshwater body shared by Chad, Cameroon, Niger, and Nigeria has shrunk by about 90%.
Lake Chad
As the Earth's crust cracks open at a divergent boundary, magma pushes up to form active volcanoes like this famous site in italy.
Pompeii
Because the desert is a very dangerous place to travel, Bedouin culture places a huge value on this tradition of welcoming guests.
What is hospitality?
The Great Mosque of Djenné in Mali is made from this material, using local clay, straw, and river silt.
What is sun-dried mud-brick (adobe)?
In Ancient Egypt, the government tracked river floods using these stone measuring stations built along the riverbanks.
What are Nilometers?
This group of people around Lake Chad needs deep water levels to catch fish and make a living.
Fishermen
Divergent, convergent, and transform are the three main types of these boundaries.
What are tectonic plate boundaries?
Located south of Egypt along the Nile, this ancient kingdom (also called Nubia) had rich amounts of gold and iron ore.
Kingdom of Kush
These permanent palm-wood beams are built directly into the Great Mosque of Djenné to act as scaffolding for annual repairs.
What are toron beams?
During flood season, the Egyptian government enforced this system requiring peasant farmers to do forced labor building pyramids and canals in exchange for food.
What is the corvée system?
This group around Lake Chad needs open access to shorelines so their cattle herds can drink without fences blocking the way.
Who are nomadic herders?
The Earth's crust is broken up into these large puzzle-like pieces that are always moving.
What are tectonic plates?
Nubian builders took inspiration from Egypt but built their royal tombs with this much steeper, narrower design
What are pyramids