Desert is in Poland!

May 24, 2015 7:32 PM

Welcome to the Polish Sahara! Glaciers and medieval industrial degradation created the Bledow Desert, a small area of scrub and blowing sands in Poland. Former WWII training ground - now a tourist destination.
posted by bq (7 comments total)

See also the Mainzer Grosser Sand, which was also created during the last ice age. There are plants here that grow nowhere else, The most amazing thing is that this micro-habitat survived decades of use as a training area for the tracked vehicles of an entire U.S. Army mechanized Infantry brigade.
posted by ereshkigal45 at 10:15 PM on May 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

This sentence gets better with every clause:

Mbeda Ndege is part of a Facebook group of about 600 young African Poles, and he recounted his visits to Ethiopia and South Africa on a Polish television show on which Poles who have traveled to far-flung locales offer an overview of their experiences with and the highlights of a foreign culture, including showing off knickknacks they acquired in their travels and demonstrating dance moves.

Dance moves? Yes please.
posted by Rock Steady at 10:57 PM on May 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

And the... idiosyncratic translation in the second link is delightful.
posted by Rock Steady at 10:59 PM on May 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

Canada has a similar area: Carcross Desert.
posted by Fongotskilernie at 1:55 AM on May 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

Raabjerg Mile
posted by mumimor at 2:48 AM on May 25, 2015

In the Netherlands we used to have sand dunes threaten crops and whole villages. It started around 800 as a result of deforestation. And later on the top soil of the remaining heather was used as fertilizer which increased the erosion. In the 19th century zandverstuivingen took up 87.600 hectare (216 464 acres). Which is a lot for a small country like the NL. The national forestry service was created around 1900 to combat the erosion.
Nowadays a few zandverstuivingen remain and are maintained in natural parks by conscious erosion because people like them. The sand dunes have a desert like microclimate of day time temperatures up to 60 C and freezing temperatures in the night in summer.

Googling for the word 'zandverstuiving' will provide you with images.

(This subject is dear to my heart since I grew up in an area of zandverstuivingen)
posted by jouke at 3:34 AM on May 25, 2015 [5 favorites]

But were any of those created by potato farming, as was the Desert of Maine?
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 12:48 PM on May 25, 2015 [2 favorites]