Karoo (crater) Karoo (crater) Karoo is an impact crater on the Asteroid 253 Mathilde, named for the Great Karoo Basin, a coal basin in South Africa. It is 33.4 kilometers in diameter and was the most prominent crater seen during NEAR Shoemaker's Flyby of the Asteroid. The critical crater diameter is the scale at which cratering “goes global” and results in a solitary distinct crater. All smaller craters—however large D might be—are local events. Mathilde is thus a particularly interesting case, since it is the largest asteroid imaged at sufficient resolution to show that its topography is clearly exogenic, governed by impacts.
Kazakh semi-desert in livestock numbers in Kazakhstan is allowing the native plants a greater opportunity to regenerate. The Kazakh semi-desert is an ecotone between the Kazakh Steppe to the north and the Central Asian northern desert to the south, running in a band across central Kazakhstan. The climate here is semi-arid and highly continental. Precipitation averages between and annually. Mean temperatures in January range from and , while July means are between and . Annual average temperatures are around . The region's topography consists of vast, flat plains and salt flats broken by dissected plateaus (known locally as ""melkosopochniki""). As a transition