Riparian Zones are considered biodiversity and ecosystem services hotspots. In arid environments, these ecosystems represent key habitats, since water availability makes them unique in terms of fauna, flora and ecological processes. Simple yet powerful remote sensing techniques were used to assess how spatial and temporal land cover dynamics, and water depth reflect distribution of key land cov...

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...

Quantifying the ecological patterns of loss of ecosystem function in extreme drought is important to understand the carbon exchange between the land and atmosphere. Rain-use efficiency [RUE; gross primary production (GPP)/precipitation] acts as a typical indicator of ecosystem function. In this study, a novel method based on maximum rain-use efficiency (RUEmax) was developed to detect losses of...

Evapotranspiration is a major loss flux of the water balance in arid and semi-arid areas. The estimation of actual evapotranspiration has significance for hydrological and environmental purposes. The Surface Energy Balance System (SEBS) algorithm was applied to estimate actual evapotranspiration in the Qaidam Basin and its eight hydrological sub-regions, Northwest China. There were 3,036 cloud-...

A novel algorithm for the detection of precipitation is described and tested. The algorithm is applicable to any modern passive microwave radiometer on board polar orbiting satellites independent of the observation geometry and channel frequency assortment. The algorithm is based on the application of canonical correlation analysis and on the definition of a threshold to be applied to the resul...

AIM To evaluate the effect of long-term annual land applications of Class B biosolids on soil bacterial diversity at University of Arizona Marana Agricultural Field Center, Tucson, Arizona. METHODS AND RESULTS Following the final of 20 consecutive years of application of Class B biosolids in March 2005, followed by cotton growth from April to November 2005 surface soil samples (0-30 cm) were ...

Dry Land Asia is the largest arid and semi-arid region in the northern hemisphere that suffers from land desertification. Over the period 1982–2011, there were both overall improvement and regional degeneration in the vegetation NDVI. We analyze future climate changes in these area using two ensemble-average methods from CMIP5 data. Bayesian Model Averaging shows a better capability to represen...

Objective: More than 75 percent of Iran is located in arid and semi-arid then land degradation and desertification are one of the crises ecological. We require a proper understanding of causes and processes of desertification to control the huge phenomenon on the global and regional situation. Because southeast of Iran located in arid land then assessment of desertification is very importance f...

Objective: More than 75 percent of Iran is located in arid and semi-arid then land degradation and desertification are one of the crises ecological. We require a proper understanding of causes and processes of desertification to control the huge phenomenon on the global and regional situation. Because southeast of Iran located in arid land then assessment of desertification is very importance f...