The objective of the study is to explore the scope for water productivity enhancement in irrigated agriculture in India through: i] water control; ii] optimizing nutrient input to crop; iii] improving the quality and reliability of irrigation water; and, iv] growing crops in regions where climate is favourable. The study is based on data from three important river basins in India, viz., Indus, ...

Playas in endorheic basins are of environmental value and highly scientific because of their natural habitats of a wide variety of species and indicators for climatic changes and tectonic activities within continents. Remote sensing, due to its capability of acquiring repetitive data with synoptic coverage, provides a unique tool to monitor and collect spatial information about playas. Most stu...

100-150 words) Remote sensing methods for locating and monitoring temporary ponds over large areas in arid lands were tested on a study site in Northern Senegal. Three main results are presented, validated with field data and intended to highlight different spectral, spatial and temporal characteristics of the methods: 1) Among several water indices tested, two Middle InfraRed-based indices (MN...

Abstract Intermittent streams are globally distributed, comprise over half the length of global river network, and expected to become more prevalent. However, most studies intermittent conducted at extremes scale, limited in taxonomic temporal scope, focus exclusively on drying patterns. Here, we assessed how both flow intermittency orientation perennial refuges affect aquatic invertebrates sem...

Growing and changing demands on water supply, along with natural climate variability and possible anthropogenically induced climate change, make water resource management and planning increasingly challenging, particularly in arid regions. Instrumental climate and gaged streamflow records provide just a snapshop of recent natural hydrologic variability. In this paper, we use tree-ring-based ann...

The Heihe River Basin (HRB) is a typical arid inland river basin in northwestern China. From the 1960s to the 1990s, the downstream flow in the HRB declined as a result of large, artificial changes in the distribution of water and land and a lack of effective water resource management. Consequently, the ecosystems of the lower reaches of the basin substantially deteriorated. To restore these de...

Satellite-based precipitation data have contributed greatly to quantitatively forecasting precipitation, and provides a potential alternative source for precipitation data allowing researchers to better understand patterns of precipitation over ungauged basins. However, the absence of calibration satellite data creates considerable uncertainties for The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM...

Population genetic information can provide valuable insight for the conservation and management of threatened and endangered plant species. Tamarix taklamakanensis is an endangered shrub endemic to arid basins of northwestern China. This species serves to stabilize soils in this region, but has seen substantial loss in its abundance due to depletion of ground water. The populations of this spec...

Water storage change has implications not only for the hydrological cycle, but also for sustainable water resource management in especially semi-arid river basins. Satellite/remote sensing techniques have gained increasing application in monitoring basin and regional hydrological processes in recent decades. In this study, the latest version of GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) is...