In many arid and semi-arid regions whether or not to desalinate seawater has long been a non-issue and policy debates are focused on the timing and extent of the desalination activities. We analyze how water scarcity and demand structure, on the one hand, and cost reduction via R&D programs, on the other hand, affect the desirable development of desalination technologies and the time profiles o...

Water has become increasingly scarce in northwestern China due to climate change, economic growth and burgeoning population. Improving agriculture water use efficiency is of strategic significance in promoting socio-economic water productivity for arid and semi-arid inland river basins. Based on the household-level data collected in Zhangye City, which is located in the middle reaches of Heihe ...

The Penman-Monteith equation is useful for computing evaporation rates of uniform surfaces, such as dense vegetation or bare soil. This equation becomes less useful for evaluation of evaporation rates at the regional scale, where surfaces are generally characterized by a patchy combination of vegetation and soil. This is particularly true in the arid and semi-arid regions of the world. The appr...

Milna Crater, Mars (23.4S, 12.3W) exhibits signs of fluvial modification early in Mars history, including a large multi-lobed fan deposit cut by several sinuous valleys. We describe the past hydrologic conditions in Milna and the surrounding area, including a potential lake with a volume of 50 km 3. We also introduce new methods (i) to calculate the timescale of sediment deposition by consideri...

Previous studies that quantified variations in runoff have mainly focused on the combined impacts of climate and human activities or climate and land cover change. Few have separated land cover change from human activities, which is critical for effective management of water resources. This study aims to investigate the impact of changing environmental conditions on runoff using the Soil and Wa...

In a modeling study we examine vulnerability of income from mobile (transhumant) pastoralism and sedentary pastoralism to reduced mean annual precipitation (MAP) and droughts. The study is based on empirical data of a 3410 km research region in southern, semi-arid Morocco. The land use decision model integrates a meta-model of the Environmental Policy Integrated Climate (EPIC) simulator to depi...

The Mediterranean region is one of the hot spots of climate change. This study aims at understanding what are the conditions sustaining tree diversity in Mediterranean wet forests under future scenarios of altered hydrological regimes. The core of the work is a quantitative, dynamic model describing the coexistence of different Mediterranean tree species, typical of arid or semi-arid wetlands. ...

Recent research has shown that the ecology of stress has hitherto been neglected, but it is in fact an important influence on the distribution and numbers of wild vertebrates. Environmental changes have the potential to cause physiological stress that can affect population dynamics. Detailed information on the influence of environmental variables on glucocorticoid levels (a measure of stress) a...

Groundwater-fed irrigation has supported growth in agricultural production around the world by allowing farmers to buffer production against the risks associated with variable and uncertain climatic conditions. However, uncontrolled exploitation has also led to rapid rates of groundwater depletion in many semi-arid and arid regions that threaten farmers' long-term capacity to adapt to future cl...

Climate change will exacerbate the degree of abiotic stress experienced by semi-arid ecosystems. While abiotic stress profoundly affects biotic interactions, their potential role as modulators of ecosystem responses to climate change is largely unknown. Using plants and biological soil crusts, we tested the relative importance of facilitative-competitive interactions and other community attribu...