ee.1.2 Hot and arid extreme environments
Content
- Geographic inquiry and concept(s)
- Why some places are considered to be extreme environments
- Geographic knowledge and understanding
- Relief and climatic characteristics that make environments extreme, including unreliability and intensity of rainfall in arid environments and the risk of flash floods
- Case study or detailed examples
- Detailed examples for illustrative purposes
- Aims of this lesson
- To be able to describe the relief and climatic characteristics that make hot and arid environments extreme
- To be able to explain the unreliability and intensity of rainfall in arid environments
- To be able to explain the risk of flash floods in hot arid environments
- To be able to describe and explain how relief, climate, human discomfort present challenges for human habitation and resource development and give detailed examples for each
Base knowledge and understanding
News article
Two people dead and nearly 80 rescued after Grand Canyon flash flood
Officials say one person still unaccounted for as forecast heavy rain and thunderstorms threaten further flooding
The Guardian · 1 September 2026
Key terms
- Climate
- The long-term weather pattern in an area, typically averaged over 30 years.
- Flash flood
- Flooding that begins within 6 hours, and often within 3 hours, of the heavy rainfall (or other cause). The intensity of the rainfall, the location and distribution of the rainfall, the land use and topography, vegetation types and growth/density, soil type, and soil water-content all determine just how quickly the Flash Flooding may occur, and influence where it may occur.
- Human discomfort
- Humans generally feel comfortable between temperatures of 22 °C to 27 °C and a relative humidity of 40% to 60%.
- Human habitation
- The use of a structure for living for any period of time for activities such as sleeping, eating or cooking, or combinations thereof.
- Relative humidity
- The ratio of how much water vapour is in the air and how much water vapour the air could potentially contain at a given temperature.
- Relief
- The term used for the differences in height from place to place on the land’s surface and it is greatly affected by the underlying geology. Relief relies on the hardness, permeability and structure of a rock.
- Resource development
- The development of natural resources effectively and efficiently without harming the environment or human existence.
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Review
- Explain how the unreliability of rainfall in semi-arid areas increases the risk of flash floods. [2]
- Explain two climatic characteristics that make hot arid environments extreme. [4]
- Examine how the physical characteristics of cold environments present challenges for infrastructure and resource development. [10]
- Examine how physical and chemical weathering processes contribute to the development of landscape features in hot arid environments. [10]
- Examine why some semi-arid environments are particularly vulnerable to flash flood events. [10]
- Examine how the distinction between aridity and infertility affects the agricultural opportunities available in hot arid environments. [10]
- Examine how relief, climate and remoteness combine to create challenges for human habitation in one or more extreme environments. [10]