Over the past decade, rapid landscape pattern change has taken place in many arid and semi-arid regions of China, such as the Yellow River Basin. In this paper, landscape evolution was investigated by the combined use of satellite remote sensing, geographic information system (GIS) and landscape modelling technologies. The aim was to improve our understanding of landscape changes so that sustai...

As a countermeasure to the greenhouse effect, afforestation in arid areas has been proposed and tested in an arid area of Western Australia. According to the CDM/JI guidelines set by UNFCCC, the sequestrated carbon amount accountable as carbon credit was estimated in this study. First, the sequestrated carbon amount by planted trees was measured by repeated tree censuses. Second, the land use t...

Creontiades dilutus (Stål), the green mirid, is a polyphagous herbivorous insect endemic to Australia. Although common in the arid interior of Australia and found on several native host plants that are spatially and temporally ephemeral, green mirids also reach pest levels on several crops in eastern Australia. These host-associated dynamics, distributed across a large geographic area, raise qu...

Although regional climates throughout much of the world appear to have become more arid in late Cenozoic time, sedimentation rates, and therefore presumably erosion rates, have increased. For sustained erosion of elevated terrain, at least where glaciers are not the major erosive agent, rivers must incise. Therefore bed-load transport by rivers should be a rate-limiting process in erosion. Theo...

Water storage depletion is a worsening hydrological problem that limits agricultural production in especially arid/semi-arid regions across the globe. Quantifying water storage dynamics is critical for developing water resources management strategies that are sustainable and protective of the environment. This study uses GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment), GLDAS (Global Land Data A...

Predators, particularly those living in deserts, use two main foraging strategies, namely sit-andwait or wide foraging. The Moorish gecko Tarentola mauritanica, a gecko frequently inhabiting humanized habitats, has been repeatedly classified as a sit-and-wait predator. However, previous data on dietary composition in natural habitats suggest a wide foraging strategy for this species. This study...