this study was aimed to assess the causes of the structural decline in the renewal rate of apristine oak forest close to rome (central italy) by analyzing long-term measurements of the water budget in open and fenced areas. despite dry climate conditions in the area, long-term soil moisture measurements at 100 cm soil depth indicated that an enough large amount of water is available to oaks dur...

greece has experienced particularly severe and frequent forest fires during summer 2007 together with exceptionally dry meteorological conditions culminated in distinct heat waves. the present study analyzes the time pattern of daily values of two fire risk indices (nesterov and angstrom) based on meteorological data made available for a number of gauging stations between 1 june and 31 august o...

drought detecting is a necessary aspect of drought risk management. it is generally performed usingdifferent drought indices that are effectively continuous functions of rainfall and other hydro- meteorologicalvariables. a number of drought indices have been introduced and used in various countries to date. in thecurrent research, four meteorological drought indices including the standardized p...

abstract. rangeland vegetation dynamics encompass all processes of changes in vegetation composition and structure over time. investigating the rangeland ecosystem dynamics makes it possible to determine the effects of climatic and management conditions on qualitative and quantitative changes of the vegetation in a specific period of time. accordingly, data collection and measurements for evalu...

land vulnerable to desertification increased in the mediterranean basin since world war ii dueto several interacting factors including climate variations, land-use changes and growing human pressure. itwas hypothesized that the increase in the level of land vulnerability is not distributed homogeneously overtime and space while impacting preferentially landscapes surrounding large urban agglome...

the present study illustrates the long-term changes in selected socioeconomic variables (population,industrial activities, settlement dispersion, and land-use) together with climate aridity trends in thriasio, the larger industrial area of greece located twenty kilometers far from athens. this region, originally devoted to agriculture, experienced fast industrial and economic development during...

investigations of lake umbozero, the second largest and the deepest lake of the murmansk region, were carried out to detect and define biogeochemical patterns of distribution of the chalcophile elements (hg, cd, pb, as) in water, sediments and organs and tissues of whitefishes. lake umbozero is affected by emissions and effluents from mining and metallurgical enterprises of the murmansk region,...