I.   A cold desert is a desert that has snow in the winter instead of just dropping a few degrees in temperature like they would in a Hot and Dry desert. It never gets warm enough for plants to grow.  Cold deserts are also characterized by cold winters and high overall rainfall throughout the winter and occasionally over the summer.  Cold deserts occur in the Antarctic, Greenland, and the Nearctic realm.  Antarctica is the world's largest cold desert being composed of about 98 percent thick continental ice sheet and 2 percent barren rock. The cold desert has its name because of its extremely cold temperatures.  Plants in the cold desert are widely scattered, with plant heights varying between 15 to 122 cm.  Most of the plants in the cold deserts of the world are deciduous, with most having spiny leaves. 

II.  Cold deserts have short, moist, and moderately warm summers with fairly long and extremely cold winters.  The average winter temperature is between negative 2 to 4 degrees Celsius, and winters receive an abundance of snow.  The average precipitation in cold deserts is 15 to 26 cm, with having the heaviest rainfall of the spring in April through May.

III. Biomass is a term that expresses the amount of living matter in a given habitat, and also is expressed either as the weight of organisms per unit area or as the volume or organisms per unit volume of habitat.  Productivity is the quality of being productive or having the power to produce.  Due to large amounts of standing woody biomass and potentially slow decomposition rates, carbon accumulation is found much higher in cold deserts than in other biomes.  Soils in cold deserts are unfertile, lacking on humus and generally red or gray in color. 

IV. Cold deserts have many threats that affect its biome, including its flora and fauna.  Cold deserts receive little to no rainfall, have low levels of moisture and extreme temperatures that harm the animals and plants. When there is no precipitation, the cold desert often falls in short, sudden, and severe bursts that can cause flash flooding. Fires are another example of harmful threats to the biome as well.

V. Kangaroo rats have the ability to convert the dry seeds they eat into water, and they don't sweat nor pant line other animals to keep away and calm.  These animals are most common to occupy sandy to rocky soils in desert locations with little vegetation, and primarily eat seeds which they can store for later consumption.  Kangaroo rats have specialized kidneys which allow them to dispose of waste materials with very little output of water.

VI. Xerophytes or cacti are drought resistant and survive by remaining leafless during the dry season or by reducing water loss by having small, waxy leaves.  They frequently have shallows and widely branching root systems which store water during the wet seasons.