The monitoring of invasive grasses and vegetation in remote areas is challenging, costly, and on the ground sometimes dangerous. Satellite and manned aircraft surveys can assist but their use may be limited due to the ground sampling resolution or cloud cover. Straightforward and accurate surveillance methods are needed to quantify rates of grass invasion, offer appropriate vegetation tracking ...

Clay content (fraction < 2 μm) is one of the most important soil properties. It controls soil hydraulic properties like wilting point, field capacity and saturated hydraulic conductivity, which in turn control the various fluxes of water in the unsaturated zone. In our study site, the Kairouan plain in central Tunisia, existing soil maps are neither exhaustive nor sufficiently precise for water...

The rapid expansion of deserts in recent decades as a result of human actions combined with climatic disasters has highlighted the necessity to understand biological processes in arid environments. Whereas physical processes and the biology of flora and fauna have been relatively well studied in marginally used arid areas, knowledge of desert soil micro-organisms remains fragmentary. This chapt...

Arid and desert lands in terms of specific environmental characteristics such as low annual precipitation,sequential droughts, huge drop in ground water levels or the like, have always faced strict limitations in waterresources. In the shadow of these characteristics and many other factors, Water Price Index (WPI) is significantlyaffected. This study set out with the aim of identifying and dete...

Drylands cover 40 to 45% of the earth’s land surface and harbour about 38% of people on the planet. The UN has claimed that up to 70% of drylands suffer from desertification, affecting 168 countries globally. This has led to desertification becoming the first globally defined environmental issue. Much has been written about problems with the idea of desertification and how it became such a powe...

SUMMARY Operational monitoring of vegetative cover by remote sensing currently involves the utilisation of vegetation indices. Vegetation indices are widely used for assessing and monitoring ecological variables such as vegetation cover, above-ground biomass and leaf area index. This study reviewed and evaluated different vegetation indices for estimating vegetation cover in rangelands in Cente...

— This paper reports on the use of computer and hand dravm techniques for Implementing the Recreation Oppor­ tunity Planning inventory and analysis phases for the Steens Mountain Recreation Lands. Techniques were compared for land classifications and time and monetary costs. Results show computer mapping less likely to result in classification er­ rors, but more costly to conduct. The USDI Bure...

Soil salinity phenomena are one of the main problems of arid and semi-arid lands. Saline soils constitute a huge part of Iran, and also threaten its neighboring lands. Therefore, in order to optimum exploitation of such soils, qualitative monitoring is necessary. Recently, remote sensing techniques have been increasingly applied in monitoring soil characteristics. The present study was carried ...

The present study assessed the household-level biophysical vulnerability to climate variability and extreme events of fish farmers in Kitui East Central Sub counties County, Kenya. employed a descriptive survey design total 60 constituted sample. Carefully selected indicators for exposure sensitivity were used operationalize vulnerability. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was assign weights i...