Most palaeoecological research has focused on glacial– interglacial oscillations as the major climatic changes in Amazonia during the Quaternary (Haffer, 1969; Colinvaux et al., 2000; Pennington et al., 2000). Nevertheless accumulating data point to the importance of Holocene cycles of drought as a potent force shaping lowland communities. Servant et al. (1981) predicted the presence of a midHo...

Pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R. Br) is a staple food in many developing countries and constitutes the major source of essential nutrients in semi-arid and arid regions of Africa and India. The knowledge about the nutrient content of autochthonous pearl millet ecotypes is scarce. In this study, biochemical analysis of six Tunisian pearl millet ecotypes has been investigated. Results pro...

The Holocene Warm Period (HWP) provides valuable insights into the climate system and biotic responses to environmental variability and thus serves as an excellent analogue for future global climate changes. Here we document, for the first time, that warm and wet HWP conditions were highly favourable for magnetofossil proliferation in the semi-arid Asian interior. The pronounced increase of mag...

A review of Holocene climate patterns in eastern Australia is presented on the basis of a series of high-resolution pollen records across a north-to-south transect. Previously published radiocarbon data are calibrated into calendar years and fitted with an age-depth model. The resulting chronologies are used to compare past environmental changes and describe patterns of climate change on a cale...

Multiproxy paleoenvironmental records (pollen and planktonic isotope) from Ocean Drilling Program Site 976 (Alboran Sea) document rapid ocean and climate variations during the last glacial that follow the Dansgaard-Oeschger climate oscillations seen in the Greenland ice core records, thus suggesting a close link of the Mediterranean climate swings with North Atlantic climates. Continental condi...

Over the past several decades, donors, multilateral organizations and governments have invested substantial resources in developing and disseminating improved varieties of sorghum and millet in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Sorghum and the millets, a group of small-seeded grasses indigenous to SSA, are two of the most important staple foods in this region. Primarily cultivated by smallholder farmer...

1 Introduction Accurate quantitative precipitation estimation (QPE) is one of the most important elements in meteorological and hydrologic analyses. It has been long recognized, however, that rain gauge networks are usually inadequate because of their limited distribution. During the last decades intense scientific efforts have been devoted to utilize remote sensing information for the estimati...

Global mean surface temperatures have risen by 0.85 ± 0.20 °C, over the period 1880–2012, and projections of future climate change suggest further global warming (IPCC 2013). Warming of the global climate is expected to be accompanied by increase of global precipitation, as warmer air is able to hold more water vapour (Wentz et al. 2007). However, precipitation changes are expected to differ fr...

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...

Agriculture of the inland arid region in Xinjiang depends on irrigation, which forms oasis of Northwest China. The production and water use of wheat, a dominant crop there, is significantly affected by undergoing climate variability and change. The objective of this study is to quantify inter-annual variability of wheat yield and water use from 1955 to 2006. The farming systems model APSIM (Agr...