Land degradation impacts on several critical environmental issues such as food security, diminishing quality and quantity of fresh water resources, preservation of natural resources, loss of biodiversity, and global climate change. Land degradation is responsible for soil erosion and can eventually lead to desertification. The International Convention to Combat Desertification (CCD) defines des...

Coccidioidomycosis occurs in arid and semi-arid regions of the New World from the western United States to Argentina. Highly endemic areas are present in the southwest United States. Coccidioides species live in the soil and produce pulmonary infection via airborne arthroconidia. The skin may be involved by dissemination of the infection, or by reactive eruptions, such as a generalized exanthem...

Concentrations of copper (Cu), lead (Pb), chromium (Cr), mercury (Hg), and arsenic (As) were measured in arid agricultural and irrigated agricultural soils collected in Daba Village, Shajiawuan Village, Gangou Village and Sifangwu Village, located in central Gansu Province, China. Concentrations except Hg and Pb were lower than the background values in grey calcareous soil in the selected arid ...

Landscape metrics are useful tools in investigating spatial structure and in describing the heterogeneity of landscapes, but are sensitive to grain size. Thus, it is necessary to determine the appropriate grain size before researching landscape patterns. However, there have been few large-scale investigations in high-precision research about the effect of grain size on landscape patterns, espec...

The arid valley is a unique type of ecological fragile landscape in the Hengduan Mountain Area, China. The boundary of the arid valley is one of the response indicators to mountainous climate change. Based on the meteorological data from 1999 to 2013 and the SPOT remote sensing images in 1999 and 2013 this study explored the response characteristics of the arid valley boundary to regional clima...

The arid zones of the world are all characterized by a large deficit of rainfall in relation to the potential evapotranspiration. Their distribution around the world is governed by the interaction of global atmospheric circulation patterns, the distribution of land and sea, and local topography. Countries that have substantial areas with arid conditions belong to very different groups in terms ...

Citrus is produced commercially in over 30 countries worldwide. The major growing regions are located primarily between 40° north-south latitude where minimum temperature is generally greater than 20°F. Within these latitudes there are several important climatic areas that affect the growth and development, yields, and fruit quality of citrus. These include the low, middle, and high tropical re...

The camel is a comparatively hardy animal and is less susceptible to many of the diseases that affect other livestock species in the same areas. Despite that, the camel may contract many other diseases, some of which are still unknown. Pastoralists have for centuries herded camels in the arid and semi-arid areas of Kenya, and elsewhere in the Horn of Africa, and they have encountered and named ...

tourism as a growing industry needs special attention in developing countries. during last decades, nature based tourism has been growing faster than other tourism fields and it seems to grow even faster. ever growing demand for nature based tourism emphasizes the necessity of a holistic planning for preserving environment against degradation. objective of this study is to present a nature base...