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...

It is important to study the species-abundance distribution pattern in a community reveal mechanism of assembly. Six abundance models (log-normal model, Zipf Zipf–Mandelbrot broken stick niche preemption and Volkov model) were used fit six scales (10 m × 10 m, 20 40 ×40 60 80 100 m) fixed, semifixed, mobile sand dunes Gurbantünggüt Desert, respectively. The best-fitting model was determined usi...

Terrestrial vegetation dynamics are closely influenced by both climate and by both climate and by land use and/or land cover change (LULCC) caused by human activities. Both can change over time in a monotonic way and it can be difficult to separate the effects of climate change from LULCC on vegetation. Here we attempt to attribute trends in the fractional green vegetation cover to climate vari...