Climate and topographic controls on simulated pasture production in a semiarid Mediterranean watershed with scattered tree cover

Climate and topographic controls on simulated pasture production in a semiarid Mediterranean watershed with scattered tree cover

Natural grasses in semiarid rangelands constitute an effective protection against soil erosion and degradation, are a source of natural food for livestock and play a critical role in the hydrologic cycle by contributing to the uptake and transpiration of water. However, natural pastures are threatened by land abandonment and the consequent encroachment of shrubs and trees as well as by changing...

Human impacts drive a global topographic signature in tree cover.

The Anthropocene is a geological epoch marked by major human influences on processes in the atmosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere and geosphere. One of the most dramatic features of the Anthropocene is the massive alteration of the Earth's vegetation, including forests. Here we investigate the role of topography in shaping human impacts on tree cover from local to global scales. We show that human...

Extreme Drought Effects on Carbon Dynamics of a Semiarid Pasture

Published in Agron. J. 105:1749–1760 (2013) doi:10.2134/agronj2013.0112 Available freely online through the author-supported open access option. Copyright © 2013 by the American Society of Agronomy, 5585 Guilford Road, Madison, WI 53711. All rights reserved. No part of this periodical may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,...

Impact of spatially-variable soil thickness and texture on simulated hydrologic conditions in a semiarid watershed in northwest Mexico

Soil depth and texture exert strong controls on the spatial distribution of water and energy fluxes and states in semiarid watersheds. As a result, realistic representations of the spatial soil characteristics within watersheds are important for the improvement of process-based distributed hydrologic modeling applications. In this study, we evaluated the effects of combinations of soil thicknes...

Management in Semiarid Mediterranean Agroecosystems