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Deserts

Tanami Desert

Description

The landscapes of the Tanami Desert are mainly featureless sand plains with small areas of moderate sand dunes or low ridges and stony rises. Much of the Tanami Desert is covered with spinifex grassland with acacia shrubland and widespread bloodwood eucalypts. Mulga is found on the occasional patches of red earth. The Tanami also contains low-lying swampy plains with samphire on buried drainage systems and ephemeral wetlands such as Lake Ruth and Sanctuary Swamp.

Over 14 million hectares of the Tanami Desert are held within the National Reserve system: four million hectares within the Northern Tanami Indigenous Protected Area (IPA) and more than 10 million hectares within the Southern Tanami IPA, Australia’s largest Indigenous protected area.

Geographical area

The Tanami Desert covers 310,000 square kilometres, most of which lies in the Northern Territory. The western section of the Tanami lies in Western Australia between the Great Sandy Desert and the Kimberley.

Climate

The Tanami bioregion has a semi-arid climate influenced by the monsoon, so that most rain falls within the summer months. The median annual rainfall (1890–2005) averaged across the bioregion is 298 mm.

Desert communities

Warlpiri lands. Yuendumu and Lajamanu.

Flora and fauna

The sandplains of the Tanami support hummock grasslands of soft spinifex (T. pungens) with a mixed and sparse overstorey of desert bloodwoods (Corymbiaspp.), corkwood (Hakea lorea), acacias and grevilleas. The uplands support acacia scrubland and soft spinifex. Drainage lines in the north support ribbon grass (Crysopogonspp.) and Flinders grass (Iseilemaspp.) short-grasslands, often as savannas with river gum. Wetlands areas in the southern Tanami may be fringed by coolibah (Eucalyptus coolabah), bluebush or desert honey myrtle (Melaleuca glomerata).

The Tanami Desert is considered a stronghold for many rare or declining animal species within the Northern Territory, such as greater bilby, brush-tailed mulgara, Australian bustard and great desert skink. Three plant species are endemic to the Tanami bioregion.

Threatened species

The Tanami bioregion supports one threatened plant species (dwarf desert spike-rush Eleocharis papillosa) and 25 threatened or vulnerable animal species, including:

Key threats

Introduced predators such as red foxes and feral cats have been a primary cause of the extinction of small-to medium-sized mammals across Australia’s arid inland. Along with wild dogs, they continue to pose significant threats to mammals, reptiles and ground-dwelling birds across all of Australia’s desert ecosystems.

Introduced herbivores such as camels, donkeys, horses and rabbits cause significant damage to desert ecosystems through overgrazing, particularly around water sources where they tend to congregate in dry times. Camels foul waterholes and have significant impacts upon fragile salt lake and freshwater ecosystems. Feral camels, horses and donkeys are a management issue in the southeast of the bioregion and are increasing in number in the WA section of the bioregion.

Invasive species particularly buffel grass (Cenchrus ciliaris) poses the greatest threat to Australia’s desert ecosystems as it can quickly come to dominate the ground layer of vegetation. It burns hotter and more quickly than the native grasses it replaces. Buffel grass invasion in combination with larger and more intense wildfires driven by climate change have the potential to devastate the biodiversity of arid ecosystems.

Parkinsonia (Parkinsonia aculeata) is establishing around watering points on pastoral leases on the edge of the bioregion. If not controlled, it can form dense, impenetrable thickets.

Vegetation clearing for mining and exploration is a potential threat to ecosystems in the south-west of the Tanami Desert.

The Ten Deserts of Australia

Australia’s ten deserts are globally significant arid lands with diverse habitats and significant natural features. The project area supports an exceptional range of animals and plants including numerous iconic threatened species (such as the bilby and rock wallaby).  Indigenous Australians have inhabited the desert country for thousands of years and continue to have strong cultural and spiritual connections to the desert. The deserts span 2.7 million km2 across five state and territory jurisdictions.

 

Great Victoria
Tirari
Sturt Stony
Simpson
Tanami
Great Sandy
Little Sandy
Gibson
Pedirka
Strzelecki
  • Ten Deserts project area

Great Victoria Desert

The Great Victoria Desert (GVD) is the largest of Australia’s deserts, stretching from eastern Western Australia across the western half of South Australia, encompassing 420,000 square kilometres of land..

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Tirari Desert

The Tirari Desert forms the eastern edge of Lake Eyre and is partly located within the Kati Thanda – Lake Eyre National Park.

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Sturt Stony Desert

The Sturt Stony Desert covers 40,000 square kilometres of land in South Australia and Queensland between the Simpson and Strzelecki deserts

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Simpson Desert

The Simpson Desert is one of the world’s largest deserts of longitudinal dunes and extends across 180,000 square kilometres of land that straddles the border area Northern Territory, Queensland and South Australia.

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Tanami Desert

The Tanami Desert covers 310,000 square kilometres, most of which lies in the Northern Territory. The western section of the Tanami lies in Western Australia between the Great Sandy Desert and the Kimberley

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Great Sandy Desert

The Great Sandy Desert (GSD) lies between the Kimberley and Pilbara regions in the north of Western Australia. It contains vast areas of red sand plains and dunefields, and extends across 390,000 square kilometres of Western Australia and the Northern Territory

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Little Sandy Desert

The Little Sandy Desert sits to the east of the Pilbara region and to the south of the western section of the Great Sandy Desert and covers 110,000 square kilometres of the central rangelands of Western Australia

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Gibson Desert

The Gibson Desert contains vast undulating sand plains, dunefields, plains of lateritic ‘buckshot’, and upland regions of sandstone. It extends across 160,000 square kilometres of the central east rangelands of Western Australia.

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Pedirka Desert

The Pedirka Desert is a small desert 100 km north-west of Oodnadatta consists of a gently undulating plain with parallel dunes of ‘fiery’ red sands surrounded by stony tablelands. It covers 1250 square kilometres of land straddling the Northern Territory/South Australian border.

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Strzelecki Desert

The Strzelecki Desert, together with the Sturt Stony and Tirari deserts, forms the complex of desert country in north-eastern South Australia and covers covers 110,000 square kilometres of land

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