To choose the most suitable solar cell for desert climate, measurements and analysis of the integrated spectral response (ISR) and the electrical power over 32 spectral bands for monocrystalline, polycrystalline and amorphous solar cells have been carried out in Helwan during several seasons under di€erent environmental conditions. The results of ISR show that while the amorphous silicon solar ...

Waste stabilisation ponds (WSP) are the preferred method for treatment of urban wastewater in low-income countries but, especially in arid regions, the pond systems can be important breeding sites for mosquitoes of medical importance. In a WSP system in Faisalabad, Pakistan, we assessed the impact of simple environmental interventions on mosquito occurrence and abundance. Reducing the amount of...

Waterlogging and salinization arise in arid areas largely because two essential resources, irrigation water and the assimilative capacity of unconfined aquifers, are not priced or allocated correctly to reflect scarcity values and opportunity costs. Farm-level and project-level models of crop production are examined to identify policies that will encourage farmers to consider opportunity costs ...

Climate change is intensifying the hydrologic cycle and is expected to increase the frequency of extreme wet and dry years. Beyond precipitation amount, extreme wet and dry years may differ in other ways, such as the number of precipitation events, event size, and the time between events. We assessed 1614 long-term (100 year) precipitation records from around the world to identify key attribute...

BACKGROUND Although the linkage between climate change and plague transmission has been proposed in previous studies, the dominant approach has been to address the linkage with traditional statistical methods, while the possible non-linearity, non-stationarity and low frequency domain of the linkage has not been fully considered. We seek to address the above issue by investigating plague transm...

Late Quaternary histories of two North American desert biomesC4 grasslands and C3 shrublandsare poorly known despite their sensitivity and potential value in reconstructing summer rains and winter temperatures. Plant macrofossil assemblages from packrat midden series in the northern Chihuahuan Desert show that C4 grasses and annuals typical of desert grassland persisted near their present north...

Many studies have suggested that cardiovascular and respiratory disease mortality may change with fluctuations in temperature. In this study the relation between temperature and mortality has been studied in a city with desert climate. Four years data on daily temperature, cardiovascular, respiratory mortality and air pollution was acquired for Kerman, Iran. Time series, regression and correlat...

Dynamics of many amphibian populations are governed by the distribution and availability of water. Therefore, understanding the hydrological mechanisms that explain spatial and temporal variation in occupancy and abundance will improve our ability to conserve and recover populations of vulnerable amphibians. We used 16 years of survey data from intermittent mountain streams in the Sonoran Deser...

This paper examines the vulnerabilities of major livestock species raised in Australia to climate change using the regional livestock profile of Australia of around 1,400 regions. The number of each species owned, the number of each species sold, and the aggregate livestock revenue across all species are examined. The four major species analyzed are sheep, beef cattle, dairy cattle, and pigs. T...

Many subtropical and mid-latitude regions are expected to become drier due to climate change. This will lead to reduced vegetation which may in turn amplify the initial drying due to positive feedbacks such as albedo change in response to biome redistribution, an effect rarely accounted for in climate projections. Using a coupled atmosphere-ocean-land model with a dynamic vegetation component t...