Biological soil crusts are key mediators of carbon and nitrogen inputs for arid land soils and often represent a dominant portion of the soil surface cover in arid lands. Free-living soil nematode communities reflect their environment and have been used as biological indicators of soil conditions. In this study, we test the hypothesis that nematode communities are successionally more mature ben...

Over the past several thousand years, arid and semiarid China has experienced a series of asynchronous desertification events in its semiarid sandy and desert regions, but the precise identification of the driving forces of such events has remained elusive. In this paper we identify two rapid desertification events (RDEs) at ~4.6 ± 0.2 ka BP and ~3.3 ± 0.2 ka BP from the JJ Profile, located in ...

Environmental concerns over increased coal consumption are fully justified by the past history of coal use. Although improved technology has provided some safeguards, increased utilization will require mining practices, emission control technologies, and waste disposal procedures that are not yet fully integrated into the routine use of the coal energy system. The Committee on Health and Evniro...

BACKGROUND Climate change scenarios that include precipitation shifts and nitrogen (N) deposition are impacting carbon (C) budgets in arid ecosystems. Roots constitute an important part of the C cycle, but it is still unclear which factors control root mass loss and nutrient release in arid lands. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Litterbags were used to investigate the decomposition rate and nu...

Farmers have been facing numerous challenges in the production of green gram with declining yields being main challenge. This can be attributed to rainfall amounts and unreliable patterns, increased temperatures high infestation crop by pests diseases. In this study, climate data Makueni County on temperature from 1991 2020 were obtained Kenya Meteorology Department. The analyzed three sets; mo...

www.ruaf.org Maricopa County in Arizona, which includes the city of Phoenix and the surrounding suburban areas, is currently the fourth most populous county in the country and among the fastest growing(1). Rapid urbanisation has put a great deal of pressure on agriculture, which has historically been very important in the county. According to the 2007 agricultural census, total farmland decline...

Agaves can grow in marginal arid and semiarid lands where their special ecological and physiological adaptations to environmental conditions give them the potential to produce substantial biomass. Agave americana was the first agave species shown to be a Crassulacean Acid Metabolism plant, with CO2 uptake occurring primarily at night and with high wateruse efficiency (photosynthesis/transpirati...

“Sustainable development” currently has a firm grip on the lexicon of development agencies from the World Bank to small nongovernmental organizations, but it offers little practical guidance for tackling diverse problems in specific places. The concept is of particular importance to pastoral populations throughout the world—those people dependent on livestock raising in arid or semiarid lands w...

The increased deterioration of existing groundwater resources and gradual decline in costs of freshwater water production, have given new impetus to the use of desalination plants in arid lands. Nonetheless, the formation of scale on heat transfer surfaces could profoundly reduce the efficiency of thermal desalination plants. The widely used practice to mitigate scale formation in such units is...