Variability in woody plant species, vegetation assemblages and anthropogenic activities derails the efforts to have common approaches for estimating biomass and carbon stocks in Africa. In order to suggest management options, it is important to understand the vegetation dynamics and the major drivers governing the observed conditions. This study uses data from 29 sentinel landscapes (4640 plots...

The spatial distribution of crops and farming systems in Africa is determined by the duration of the period during which crop and livestock water requirements are met. The length of growing period (LGP) is normally assessed from weather station data—scarce in large parts of Africa—or coarse-resolution rainfall estimates derived from weather satellites. In this study, we analyzed LGP and its var...

Arid areas play a significant role in the global nitrogen cycle. Dry and wet deposition of inorganic nitrogen (N) species were monitored at one urban (SDS) and one suburban (TFS) site at Urumqi in a semi-arid region of central Asia. Atmospheric concentrations of NH3, NO2, HNO3, particulate ammonium and nitrate (pNH4 (+) and pNO3 (-)) concentrations and NH4-N and NO3-N concentrations in precipit...

A minimum composite method was applied to produce a 15-day interval normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) dataset from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) daily 250 m reflectance in the red and near-infrared bands. This dataset was applied to determine lake surface areas in Mongolia. A total of 73 lakes greater than 6.25 km2in area were selected, and 28 of these lakes ...

Remote sensing-based woody biomass quantification in sparsely-vegetated areas is often limited when using only common broadband vegetation indices as input data for correlation with ground-based measured biomass information. Red edge indices and texture attributes are often suggested as a means to overcome this issue. However, clear recommendations on the suitability of specific proxies to prov...

Growth in the publication of scientific articles is occurring at an exponential rate, prompting a growing need to synthesise information in a timely manner to combat urgent environmental problems and guide future research. Here, we undertake a topic analysis of dryland literature over the last 75 years (8218 articles) to identify areas in arid ecology that are well studied and topics that are e...

Abstract Drought is a devastating recurring climate hazard, with enormous impacts on livelihoods and attainment of sustainable development goals (SDGs) in semi-arid areas. The current study was conducted to evaluate households’ livelihood vulnerability droughts an African region. A total 384 households from drought-prone region Northern Cameroon were randomly sampled interviewed using structure...

It was originally suggested that this paper should deal with problems associated with the management of grazings under low rainfall conditions and the title submitted was “Problems of management of grassland under low rainfall conditions in South Africa.” It was decided, however, that as much of the veld under low rainfall conditions was not grassland, it would be better to deal with the main v...