When visiting New Zealand I was driving through Rangipo "Desert" and it gets 1500-2500mm of rain a year. Just bad soils and volcanic desolation. I live in an area where people grow crops on around 250mm of rain a year. Though a bit of bad land management and drought can turn land to sand dunes pretty fast. We probably have hundreds of smaller deserts throughout the region if semi-arid conditions and sand dunes are the membership requirements. Sorry Canada.
The article does expain how it fits the semi-arid definition as it gets 250-500mm, nowhere near 2500. Snow doesnt count, which is why antarctica is technically a dessert. Sand isnt part of the standard.
I live in a semi-arid climate (BSk) with 260mm average rainfall where they grow cereal crops. We are further to the arid end of the semi-arid classification than the desert in the article though still not technically a desert climate.
We have plants adapted to low rainfall and animals such as reptiles adapted to hot, dry conditions. You can go from crops to sand drifts to scrub and back in metres. I think I could go for a 30 minute drive, find an area of land and call it the world's smallest desert with about as much validity as the claim in the headline. The area in the article is remarkable due to its location but it seems less remarkable when compared with semi-arid areas globally.
I nominate the Perry Sandhills outside Wentworth, NSW, Australia at 0.6 square miles to be the smallest desert because it is semi-arid and has sand dunes and is only less remarkable for not being surrounded by snow.
Snow does count, although I assume it's tracked as water equivalent instead of snowfall depth (10mm of snow is generally equivalent to 1mm of rain). Antarctica gets very little precipitation, particularly on the East Antarctic Ice Sheet.
