Abstract Remotely sensed soil moisture products showed sensitivity to vegetation cover density and typology at regional dryland level. In these regions, drought monitoring is significantly performed using index rainfall data. Recently, observations have increasingly become available. This has hampered scientific progress as regards characterization of land surface processes not just in meteorol...

Understanding the dynamics of semi-arid rangelands is a prerequisite for their proper management and long-term enclosure experiments are an important tool to investigate grazing impact. Hein (2006) presents findings from a 10 year enclosure experiment in the semi-arid Ferlo, Senegal. His main conclusion is that current high grazing pressure (0.15–0.20 TLU/h) negatively affects rain use efficien...

drought is a normal, recurring feature of climate phenomena; it may occur virtually in all climatic regions. the effects of drought accumulate slowly and its impacts are spread over a larger geographical area than other natural hazards. drought is a natural hazard originating from a deficiency of precipitation that result in a water shortage for some activities or some groups and is often assoc...

increased soil dryness of hillsides and lands around the gully causes the aggravation of the gully erosion which leads to the desertion of the environment. soil moisture contents are various in different soil depths, gully positions, and in various land uses. these are fundamental for ecosystem sustainability in arid and semi-arid area. therefore, understanding the behavior of soil moisture in ...

Introduction ‘Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it’, said Mark Twain. But this famous quote is decidedly inaccurate: people have long contemplated weather modification, and both adapt or adjust to weather conditions, and move towards or away from certain climatic regimes. Southern Africa generally has a high coefficient of rainfall variation, making droughts a fr...

This paper describes the capability of remote sensing in the monitoring of rangeland vegetation productivities and dynamics in the foothill areas of Uzbekistan, in order to enhance the sustainable utilization of natural resources. Seasonal productivity, including above-ground biomass, density, coverage, foliar chlorophyll, and carotene content, was measured for the Artemisia diffusa, the domina...