Special Issue: Soil Hydrological Processes in Desert Regions: Soil Water Dynamics, Driving Factors, and Practices

Hydrological Effects of Different Soil Management Practices in Mediterranean Areas

In Mediterranean environment intensive agricultural activities are often practiced in steep slopes, where sometimes climatic, geomorphologic and land use factors (e.g. the high rainfall intensity, the scarce vegetal coverage, especially on the occasion of the early rainfalls, the low organic matter content of soils, etc.) worsen the impacts of soil erosion. In such contexts agriculture may play...

Impact of Environmental Factors and Biological Soil Crust Types on Soil Respiration in a Desert Ecosystem

The responses of soil respiration to environmental conditions have been studied extensively in various ecosystems. However, little is known about the impacts of temperature and moisture on soils respiration under biological soil crusts. In this study, CO2 efflux from biologically-crusted soils was measured continuously with an automated chamber system in Ningxia, northwest China, from June to O...

Optimality and soil water-vegetation dynamics

1 School of Environmental Systems Engineering, The University of Western Australia, Australia 2 Centre for Water Research, The University of Western Australia, Australia 3 Environmental Biology Group, Research School of Biological Sciences & Research School of Earth Sciences, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia 4 School of Geography and Environmental Science, Monash Universi...

Hydrological downscaling of soil moisture

Variations on Soil Salinity and Sodicity and Its Driving Factors Analysis under Microtopography in Different Hydrological Conditions

Over three million hectares of salt-affected soils characterized with high salinity and sodicity caused serious land degradation in Songnen Plain, northeast China. Soil salinity–sodicity heterogeneous distribution under microtopography is usually influenced by several environmental factors. The side direction movement of soil water driven by water from depression is the key factor that aggravat...