During the period 1979–1992, on average nearly 400 people each year were killed in the United States by excessive heat (NOAA 1995; Kilbourne 1997). In fact, in this period over the United States, excessive heat accounted for more reported deaths annually than hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, and lightning combined (NOAA 1995). Furthermore, agriculture products such as wheat, rice, corn and maize ...

In arid and semiarid regions most of the solar radiation penetrates through the canopy and reaches the ground, and hence the turbulent exchange coefficient under canopy Cs becomes important. The use of a constant Cs that is only appropriate for thick canopies is found to be primarily responsible for the excessive warm bias of around 10 K in monthly mean ground temperature over these regions in ...

Understanding the impacts and extent of both climate change human activities on ecosystems is crucial to sustainable development. With low anti-interference ability, arid semi-arid are particularly sensitive disturbances from activities. We investigated how what variation influenced major indicators that related ecosystem functions conditions in past decades Xinjiang, a typical region China. an...

Historically, access to water resources had always been a key issue in the formation and perpetuation of ancient cities, more importantly in the arid and semi-arid regions like the central plateau of Iran. Based on the environmental situations, Persian civilization considered ecological realities and social interaction of conservation and proper distribution of the water to sustain its availabi...

Tropical cyclones (TCs) are essential elements of the hydrological cycle in tropical and subtropical regions. In the present study, the contribution of TCs to seasonal precipitation around the tropical and subtropical North America is examined. When TC activity over the tropical eastern Pacific (TEP) or the Intra Americas Seas (IAS) is below (abovenormal), regional precipitation may be below (a...

Determination of optimal cropping pattern is essential for arid and semiarid regions. Lorestan province is located in the west part of Iran with mean annual precipitation from 50 to 1000 mm and in most parts of this province water resources for agriculture are deficit. Khoramabad region with semi-arid climate is located in Lorestan province with mean annual rainfall of 373 mm. The purpose of th...

BACKGROUND There have been numerous studies on dinosaur biogeographic distribution patterns. However, these distribution data have not yet been applied to ecological questions. Ecological studies of dinosaurs have tended to focus on reconstructing individual taxa, usually through comparisons to modern analogs. Fewer studies have sought to determine if the ecological structure of fossil assembla...