Sally Perrigo, age 11, of Honeoye Falls, New York, or her question;

What are the steppelands?

Trees do not grow in deserts, tundras or steppelands. For they need deep soil and plenty of moisture for their roots. The rain from desert showers dries up too fast to help plants with deep roots. and the tundra soil is frozen most of the year, even in summer it thaws out only a few feet from the surface. The steppe wasteland has no trees because it too cannot provide moisture for their roots.

The world's widest steppelands stretch across Russia. The climate is dry and the rainfall not much better than desert rainfall. The summers are scorching hot and the winters bitterly cold. There is not enough rainfall to moisten more than the first few feet of the soil. The region is a vast, level plain with no hills or mountains to break the extreme weather conditions.

The steppes, however, are not bare like a sandy desert. All sorts of small plants thrive there as they do in the tundra regions. The land is covered with hardy shrubs and little plants that keep their roots close to the surface of the ground. And plenty of animals make their homes in the steppelands. There are birds, burrowers, small mammals and even a steppe cat prowling through the arid wasteland.