Sedentary Agriculture and Its Implications on Soil Quality in Agro-pastoral Semi-arid Karamoja, Uganda

Envisioning adaptive strategies to change: participatory scenarios for agro-pastoral semi- arid systems in Nicaragua

Historically, the semi-arid socio-ecological systems of dry Centro American corridor have proven resilient to pressures. In the last century these systems, however, have experienced huge environmental and socio-economic changes that have increased the vulnerability of local livelihoods to shocks and perturbations. New approaches are needed to capture complex, uncertain, cross-scale and non-line...

Modelling crop canopy and residue rainfall interception effects on soil hydrological components for semi-arid agriculture

Crop canopies and residues have been shown to intercept a significant amount of rainfall. However, rainfall or irrigation interception by crops and residues has often been overlooked in hydrologic modelling. Crop canopy interception is controlled by canopy density and rainfall intensity and duration. Crop residue interception is a function of crop residue type, residue density and cover, and ra...

Response of Vegetation and Soil Carbon and Nitrogen Storage to Grazing Intensity in Semi-Arid Grasslands in the Agro-Pastoral Zone of Northern China

Overgrazing has been the primary cause of grassland degradation in the semi-arid grasslands of the agro-pastoral transition zone in northern China. However, there has been little evidence regarding grazing intensity impacts on vegetation change and soil C and N dynamics in this region. This paper reports the effects of four grazing intensities namely un-grazed (UG), lightly grazed (LG), moderat...

Controls on Patterns of Soil Moisture in Arid and Semi-arid Systems

Sustainable Small-Scale Agriculture in Semi-Arid Environments

For at least the past 8000 years, small-scale farmers in semi-arid environments have had to mitigate shortfalls in crop production due to variation in precipitation and stream flow. To reduce their vulnerability to a shortfall in their food supply, small-scale farmers developed short-term strategies, including storage and community-scale sharing, to mitigate inter-annual variation in crop produ...