‘It is interesting to note that the larger inhabited part of Australia is in those latitudes in the Southern hemisphere which in the Northern produced the great civilisations..., the latitudes between tropical luxuriance and the austerity of the north. As Ford Maddox Ford has pointed out, this belt of culture extends to the far east, along the great trade route, the belt of climate identical wi...

The transboundary Mekong River is facing two ongoing changes that are expected to significantly impact its hydrology and the characteristics of its exceptional flood pulse. The rapid economic development of the riparian countries has led to massive plans for hydropower construction, and projected climate change is expected to alter the monsoon patterns and increase temperature in the basin. The...

Climate change is predicted to cause upward shifts in forest tree distributions, which will require seedling recruitment beyond current forest boundaries. However, predicting the likelihood of successful plant establishment beyond current species' ranges under changing climate is complicated by the interaction of genetic and environmental controls on seedling establishment. To determine how gen...

A precipitation pattern scheme was combined with Koppen climate classes to form a five-class Global Climate Scheme for Urban Climate Studies (GCS/UCS) that explains observed diurnal variations of urban heat island (UHI) magnitude in different climatic zones. The validity of this scheme was demonstrated using urban/rural micrometeorological field measurements obtained during summer and winter in...

Given the current demographic trends and future growth projections, as much as 60% of the global population may suffer water scarcity by the year 2025 [9]. In addition to water scarcity, water quality deterioration is expected to intensify in resourcepoor countries in dry areas, due to human activity and climate change. It is projected that water scarce countries will have to increasingly rely ...

Agricultural intensification has increased crop yields, but at high economic and environmental cost. Harnessing ecosystem services of naturally occurring organisms is a cheaper but under-appreciated approach, because the functional roles of organisms are not linked to crop yields, especially outside the northern temperate zone. Ecosystem services in soil come from earthworms in these cooler and...

Environmental variation often induces shifts in functional traits, yet we know little about whether plasticity will reduce extinction risks under climate change. As climate change proceeds, phenotypic plasticity could enable species with limited dispersal capacity to persist in situ, and migrating populations of other species to establish in new sites at higher elevations or latitudes. Alternat...

Cultivation of Coffea arabica is highly sensitive to and has been shown to be negatively impacted by progressive climatic changes. Previous research contributed little to support forward-looking adaptation. Agro-ecological zoning is a common tool to identify homologous environments and prioritize research. We demonstrate here a pragmatic approach to describe spatial changes in agro-climatic zon...

Cereal grains, such as corn, wheat, rice, and sorghum, are grown and processed into a wide variety of ingredients for animal and human food uses. The focus of this chapter will be on corn and wheat, but other cereals have significance in global processing and human nutrition. For example, rice is grown throughout Asia and the Pacific Rim and is primarily consumed with the endosperm intact. Rice...

classification and utilization of lands based on their capability are necessary for sustainable land use management. the purpose of this study was to identify and grade the effective qualities on the rainfed farming in the roin area, north khorasan province, during the year of 2011. based on field observations and literature review the land qualities including climate, rooting conditions, moist...