The terrestrial age, or the terrestrial residence time of a meteorite, together with its exposure history provides us with useful insight into the history of the meteorite. It is easy to observe that stony meteorites can weather quickly in humid environments. However, we find that large numbers of meteorites found in semi-arid and arid environments can survive for much longer times. Meteorites ...

In arid regions, starchy agricultural products such as wheat and rice provide essential carbohydrates, minerals, fibers vitamins. However, drought, desiccation, high salinity, potentially toxic metals hydrocarbon accumulation are among the most notable stresses affecting soil quality cereal production in environments. Certain bacteria, referred to Plant Growth-Promoting Rhizobacteria (PGPR), co...

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...

On-farm production of protein is limited in most dairy farm operations in arid and semi-arid environments. Cereal-legume intercropping could be a viable option to obtain forage with higher protein content. A two-year experiment was conducted during 2009 and 2010 growing seasons in a loamy soil to determine whether intercropping pattern of barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) and annual medic (Medica...

Both light use efficiency (LUE) and water (WUE) play essential roles in ecosystem production. The extent to which production is affected by the coupling between LUE WUE remains unclear. In this study, we used data from flux measurements weather stations Heihe River Basin, China, along a strong climatic gradient quantify relationship WUE. Variations of explained up 85% variations contribution in...

Flood simulation and forecasting in various types of watersheds is a hot issue in hydrology. Conceptual hydrological models have been widely applied to flood forecasting for decades. With the development of economy, modern China faces with severe flood disasters in all types of watersheds include humid, semi-humid semi-arid and arid watersheds. However, conceptual model-based flood forecasting ...