Оңтүстік Африканың Намиб шөлі

Desert in Southern Africa

The Namib ('/n//ɑː//m//ɪ//b/ NAHmib; Namibe) is a coastal desert in Southern Africa. According to the broadest definition, the Namib stretches for more than along the Atlantic coasts of Angola, Namibia, and northwest South Africa, extending southward from the Carunjamba River in Angola, through Namibia and to the Olifants River in Western Cape, South Africa. The Namib's northernmost portion, which extends from the Angola Namibia border, is known as Moçâmedes Desert, while its southern portion approaches the neighboring Kalahari Desert. From the Atlantic coast eastward, the Namib gradually ascends in elevation, reaching up to inland to the foot of the Great Escarpment. Having endured arid or semi arid conditions for roughly 55–80 million years, the Namib may be the oldest desert in the world

The desert geology consists of sand seas near the coast, while gravel plains and scattered mountain outcrops occur further inland. The sand dunes, some of which are high and span long, are the second largest in the world after the Badain Jaran Desert dunes in China. Most of the desert wildlife is arthropods and other small animals that live on little water, although larger animals inhabit the northern regions. Near the coast, the cold ocean water is rich in fishery resources and supports populations of brown fur seals and shorebirds, which serve as prey for the Skeleton Coast's lions.

The Namib Desert is one of the 500 distinct physiographic provinces of the South African Platform physiographic division. It occupies an area of around , stretching from the Uniab River (north) to the town of Lüderitz (south) and from the Atlantic Ocean (west) to the Namib Escarpment (east). It is about long from north to south and its east–west width varies from To the north, the desert leads into the Kaokoveld; the dividing line between these two regions is roughly at the latitude of the city of Walvis Bay, and it consists in a narrow strip of land (about 50 km wide) that is the driest place in Southern Africa. To the south, the Namib borders the South African Karoo semi desert. Southern Namib (between Lüderitz and the Kuiseb River) comprises a vast dune sea with some of the tallest and most spectacular dunes in the world, ranging in color from pink to vivid orange. In the Sossusvlei area, several dunes exceed in height. The complexity and regularity of dune patterns in its dune sea have attracted the attention of geologists for decades, but it remains poorly understood. The source of the unconsolidated sand (the most recent sand sea) is dominantly from the Orange River, which drains into the Atlantic south of the Namib Sand Sea, with minor contributions in the east from the (now ephemeral) rivers that drain into the sand sea. For this reason, the Namib Sand Sea has been referred to as the "wind displaced delta of the Orange River." These rivers arise in the interior mountains of Namibia and flow after summer rain storms. such as those near the Wolwedans desert camp.

The Namib fauna mostly comprises arthropods and other small animals that can live on little water, but a few species of bigger animals are also found, including antelopes (such as gemsboks and springboks), ostriches, and in some areas even desert elephants or lions. All these species have developed techniques to survive in the Namib environment. Several endemic darkling beetles species have different methods of collecting water droplets from morning fog; they are collectively known as "fog beetles". For example, one beetle, Onymacris unguicularis, has smooth elytrons that cause humidity from the morning fogs to condense into droplets, which roll down the beetle's back to its mouth. Another beetle, the Lepidochora discoidalis, builds "water capturing" webs. Black backed jackals lick humidity from stones. Gemsboks (also known as the South African oryx) can raise the temperature of their bodies to 40 °C in the hottest hours of the day. The desert is also home to meerkats and several species of lizards.

Before the 20th century, some San roamed the Namib, gathering edible plants on the shore, hunting in the interior, and drinking the juice of the tsamma melon for water. Today, some Herero still herd their livestock in the Kaokoveld in the Namib and take them from waterhole to waterhole. A few Nama Khoikhoi still graze their livestock on the banks of the Kuiseb River in the desert. Most of the native people have left, leaving the vast majority of the desert uninhabited. The steppes in the southern half of the desert are mostly made up of ranches run by Europeans, who raise Karakul sheep with local help and send the pelts of the lambs to Europe for use in fur coats. Most of the rest of the desert is set aside for conservation. A vast portion of the desert, called the Sperrgebiet, was access restricted due to the presence of diamonds, which are mined in the area at the mouth of the Orange River. Although the desert is largely unpopulated and inaccessible, there are year round settlements at Sesriem, close to the Sossusvlei area, and other small outposts in other locations. Moçâmedes in Angola, and Lüderitz, Walvis Bay, and Swakopmund in Namibia, bordering on the desert, are the main settlements in the area. The 2015 film Mad Max: Fury Road was filmed here. In 2019 the Namibian German artist Max Siedentopf created an installation in the Namib consisting of a ring of large white blocks atop of which sit six speakers attached to a solar powered MP3 player configured to continuously play the 1982 song "Africa" by the American band Toto. The exact location of the installation has not been disclosed.

The Namib Naukluft National Park, which extends over a large part of the Namib Desert, is the largest game reserve in Africa and one of the largest in the world. While most of the park is hardly accessible, several well known visitor attractions are found in the desert. The prominent attraction is the Sossusvlei area, where high orange sand dunes surround vivid white salt pans, creating a fascinating landscape. Access to the park is either by gravel roads or dust roads (except for 60 km of concrete road from the Sesriem gate to Sossusvlei) or by light aircraft from Windhoek (the capital of Namibia, about northeast of the centre of the desert), or Swakopmund and Walvis Bay at the north end of the desert.