In a biogeographical context, the term Macaronesia broadly embraces the North Atlantic archipelagos of the Azores, Madeira, Selvagens, the Canary Islands, and Cape Verde. The peculiar arid climatic conditions in some of these places have led to the development of marine salt exploitations, which can be counted among the hypersaline habitats of the brine shrimp Artemia (Branchiopoda, Anostraca)....

L. Fengquan 7 B. Jianmin College of Environment and Construction Engineering Changchun University of Science and Technology, Changchun City. 130026. P.R. China Abstract The Qinghai–Tibet Plateau uplifted 13000 m in the Quaternary period. The average rate of uplift was 1–1.1 mm/year. The uplifting has remolded the geomorphology of China. The landform in China was changed from west-low and east-h...

The discharge process has undergone major changes in many river basins throughout the world as a result of simultaneous influences global climate change and human activity. Flow duration curves (FDCs) are crucial indicators basins’ hydrological processes. However, it is challenging to compare FDCs quantitative way. This study will identify best function with which fit flow curve semi-arid regio...

In China, the arid area occupies a quarter of the total area of the land. It mainly distributes in five provinces: Gansu, Ningxia, Qinghai, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia. In the arid area, oasis is the special landscape on the background of deserts. It is not only the most centralized area of human activities but also the largest area where human disturbances happen at the regional scale. Oasis c...

We examined adaptive clinal variation in seed mass among populations of an invasive annual species, Echium plantagineum, in response to climatic selection. We collected seeds from 34 field populations from a 1,000 km long temperature and rainfall gradient across the species' introduced range in south-eastern Australia. Seeds were germinated, grown to reproductive age under common glasshouse con...

Phylogeographical studies are common in boreal and temperate species from the Palaearctic, but scarce in arid-adapted species. We used nuclear and mitochondrial markers to investigate phylogeography and to estimate chronology of colonization events of the trumpeter finch Bucanetes githagineus, an arid-adapted bird. We used 271 samples from 16 populations, most of which were fresh samples but in...

Water shortage is common in much of Australia. With the vast majority of the continent classed as semi arid (an overall average of 455mm rainfall per year) and the tropical north having monsoonal rains and long dry seasons, groundwater provides an essential buffer for many parts of the country. In recent years though, rainfall has been significantly below average, especially across the south ea...

Water storage depletion is a worsening hydrological problem that limits agricultural production in especially arid/semi-arid regions across the globe. Quantifying water storage dynamics is critical for developing water resources management strategies that are sustainable and protective of the environment. This study uses GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment), GLDAS (Global Land Data A...