Drought is a major problematic phenomenon for the mostly semi-arid country of Iran. The north centralregions of Iran (north of Esfahan and Ghom province) have suffered from severe droughts several times duringthe last three decades. The frequent occurrence of drought in these regions is due to low and inconsistentprecipitation, abnormally high temperatures, increases in surface albedo and evapo...

The earth’s environments and ecosystems are not fi xed but vary over a wide range of space and time scales (Delcourt, and Webb 1982; see also fi g. 6.1). At the scale of tens of thousands of years, the wobble of the Earth on its axis causes variation in the solar radiation received at the earth’s surface, driving variation in climate. On shorter time scales, the Southern Oscillation of sea surf...

Increasingly in the recent past, the focus on climate change is moving towards the understanding of the occurrence, both in magnitude and frequency, of extreme climatic events like droughts and floods. In this work, an effort has been made towards identification of spatial co-occurrence of droughts across various subdivisions of India, based on the historical climatological data of the past cen...

During the 1930s, the United States experienced one of the most devastating droughts of the past century. The drought affected almost two-thirds of the country and parts of Mexico and Canada and was infamous for the numerous dust storms that occurred in the southern Great Plains. In this study, we present model results that indicate that the drought was caused by anomalous tropical sea surface ...

The series of severe droughts between 2007 and 2012 resulted in substantial decreases in cattle numbers – and enterprises – in our region. Some of the impact of these droughts may have been offset if producers in the region had reliable, drought-resilient summer forages. For all of the benefits of tall fescue, it was never meant to provide our summer forage. After all, it is a coolseason grass....

A qualitative model of smallholder agriculture with a few core variables and two allocation rules for labour and investment in agricultural resources was developed to cover spatial heterogeneity in Northeast Brazil. This region is characterised by large natural and socio-economic variance, recurrent droughts and widespread rural poverty. The resulting system dynamics essentially consists of a c...

In arid countries with long dry seasons and frequent occurrence of droughts, poultry litter is used often as a feedstuff for ruminants (Silanikove & Tiomkin, 1992; Deshck et al., 1998). It sometimes constitutes the main source of nutrients for the animals (Silanikove & Tiomkin, 1992). Similar situations exist in Southern Africa in particular during protracted droughts or when devastating veld f...