The Taklimakan Desert is located in the foreland basin of the Tibetan Plateau. We report here the results of stratigraphic investigations of a 1626-meter-thick sequence with interbedded wind-blown silt from the southern marginal Taklimakan Desert. Because the studied section is located downwind of the desert, the eolian silt accumulation is closely linked to desert formation. Our new evidence i...

A risk assessment of vegetation zone responses to climate change was conducted using the classical Holdridge life zone model on the Loess Plateau of Northwest China. The results show that there are currently ten vegetation zones occurring on the Loess Plateau (1950–2000), including alvar desert, alpine wet tundra, alpine rain tundra, boreal moist forest, boreal wet forest, cool temperate desert...

Our previous analysis of phytolith content of coprolites showed that calcium oxalate phytoliths from desert food plants caused dental microwear among prehistoric Texas hunter-gatherers. We demonstrated that phytoliths from desert succulents were ubiquitous and abundant in hunter-gatherer coprolites. We found that calcium oxalate phytoliths were harder than human dental enamel. We concluded that...

[1] Changes in desert area due to humans have important implications from a local, regional to global level. Here I focus on the latter in order to better understand estimated changes in desert dust aerosols and the associated iron deposition into oceans. Using 17 model simulations from the World Climate Research Programme’s Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 3 multi-model dataset and ...

s from the 2002 Desert Symposium California State University, Desert Studies Consortium Department of Biological Science California State University, Fullerton Fullerton, California 92384

Land use and land cover change have been of great concern in global change research in recent years. Base on comparison with the remote sensing data in1982 and 2000 and field investigation, the results of land cover and land use change were obtained by the method of landscape analysis. Ten types of land use were identified: riparian woods, riparian shrubbery, desert shrubbery, desert grassland,...

Since the late 1970s, Southern Hemisphere semi-arid regions such as southern-coastal Chile, southern Africa, and southeastern Australia have experienced a drying trend in austral autumn, predominantly during April and May. The rainfall reduction coincides with a poleward expansion of the tropical belt and subtropical dry zone by around 2°-3° in the same season. This has raised questions as to w...

1 Department of Forest and Soil Sciences, Forest Ecology, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna (BOKU), Vienna, Austria 2 Mitrani Department of Desert Ecology, Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Midreshet Ben-Gurion, Israel 3 Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, French Associates Institute for Agriculture and Biotechnology of Dr...

Mitrani Department of Desert Ecology, Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Sede Boqer Campus, 84990 Midreshet Ben-Gurion, Israel Ramon Science Center, PO Box 194, 80600 Mizpe Ramon, Israel Wyler Department of Dryland Agriculture, French Associates Institute for Agriculture and Biotechnology of Drylands, Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Researc...