Soil quality index for assessing phosphate mining restoration in a hyper-arid environment

Assessing vegetation rehabilitation under restoration operations in arid rangelands (Case study: Bastak, Hormozgan province)

Background and objectives A large area of Iran rangelands is located in arid and semi-arid areas which a significant percentage of them have been degraded and are not in good condition. In these areas, vegetation restoration is not easy due to the water scarcity. Water harvesting operations are among the necessary management measures to restore and develop the rangelands of these areas. Water ...

Soil water regime and water concervation efficiency in a non-irrigated semi-arid environment

Archaea in a hyper-arid polar desert.

Studying the microbial diversity of a unique biome such as the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica, is important to understand the sustainability of life under cold-arid conditions where other forms of life (i.e., plants and animals) do not exist. Pointing et al. (1) examined multidomain microbial diversity in the McKelvey valley using culture-independent molecular approaches and interestingly foun...

Developing a soil quality index to compare soil fitness for agricultural use under different managements in the Mediterranean environment

Due to increasing land-use pressures, soil-quality assessment is in growing demand, thus a standard set of procedures to assign a soil quality index (SQI) would be beneficial. In this study, the effectiveness of different managements in upholding soil quality (for crop productivity) was compared using soil quality indicators incorporated systematically to determine a SQI. The managements includ...

Soil Moisture Measurements by Synthetic Aperture Radar and Scatterometers in the Arid and Semi-arid Environment

Water is a scarce commodity in desert regions; yet, most remote sensing experiments of soil moisture have been conducted in temperate areas. The ability to detect and reliably assess soil moisture in the arid environment has important implications both at the micro scale such as the individual farm and at the macro scale for climate modeling. A series of experiments utilizing an airborne scatte...