Golan Bel and Yosef Ashkenazy Department of Environmental Physics, Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Sede Boqer Campus 84990, Israel (Dated: May 11, 2014) Abstract Psammophilous plants are special plants that flourish in sand moving environments. There are two main mechanisms by which the wind affects these plants: (i) sand drift exposes roots and cov...

Prediction of drought and flood events can be difficult, but the standardized precipitation index (SPI) calculated from monthly data may be a useful tool for predicting future dryness/wetness events in China. The rainy season SPI was calculated from monthly precipitation data from 3804 meteorological stations in China. The spatiotemporal variation, periodic change, and trend in rainy season SPI...

Sand dunes form an important and unique system that can be mobile or fixed by vegetation. The common mobility indices of sand dunes, which are related to the wind and the amount of precipitation and potential evaporation, do not work in many dune fields around the world. The reasons for that lie in the singular physical characteristics of the sandy soil. Sand has high hydraulic conductivity cau...

Chile has an economy strongly based on the exploitation of its natural resources. Copper mining represents the main export monetary income, employing thousands of people all along the country. The Chilean Copper Corporation (CODELCO), El Salvador branch, has been the primary mining company, but it will be ending most of its activities by 201 1 unless copper prices stay at their record levels. B...

As in most part of Africa, the Bani basin (Niger River, Mali) is threatened by climate changes. This study focuses on droughts hazard and its indicators as derived from the Climatic Moisture Index using the monthly data for the period (1963-2000), in order to examine the Bani basin vulnerability to water stress. In this study, water deficit (drought) was logically addressed using the Standardiz...

Wind, in the duration of its erosional process, affects considerable changes in a grain's morphologyfrom its removal (detachment) step to sedimentation. In other word, a grain undergoes its gradualevolution during the transit process. In this project, the maturation of Aeolian sand grains had beenstudied upon as based on texture maturity indicator which includes: sorting, mean size grain, round...

drought indices are commonly used to quantify and assess drought characteristics. the standardized precipitation index (spi), and recently introduced standardized precipitation-evapotranspiration index (spei) are considered as universal meteorological drought indices which allow comparisons of drought conditions across different climate regions. the spi captures anomalies in precipitation, wher...