a r t i c l e i n f o Deserts are often neglected in what concerns conservation funding. Ecotourism, an alternative land-use with ability to preserve threatened biodiversity, is also less developed in these arid lands. Since ecotourism can constitute a complementary approach to natural and cultural resources and to local economy development, more investment should be allocated to desert ecotour...

Land use and land cover change have been of great concern in global change research in recent years. Base on comparison with the remote sensing data in1982 and 2000 and field investigation, the results of land cover and land use change were obtained by the method of landscape analysis. Ten types of land use were identified: riparian woods, riparian shrubbery, desert shrubbery, desert grassland,...

Desert ants have a sequence of optimized behaviours that allow them to forage efficiently. Recent work shows that after using navigational memories to reach previously rewarding areas, ants follow long crosswind sweeps that appear adapted for encountering odour plumes.

The Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) geostationary platform equipped with the Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI) instrument provides observations of the Earth every 15 min since 2004. Based on those measurements, we present a new method called North African Sandstorm Survey (NASCube) to: (i) generate day/night remote sensing images in order to detect sandstorms over the Saha...

Desert locust swarms intermittently damage crops and pastures in sixty countries from Africa to western Asia, threatening the food security of 10% of the world’s population. During the 20th century, desert locust control operations began organizing, and nowadays, they are coordinated by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which promotes a preventative strategy based on early warning an...

Mineral dust emission accounts for a substantial portion of particles present in the troposphere. It is emitted mostly from desert areas, mainly through intense storm episodes. The aim of this work was to quantify sizesegregated fluxes of mineral dust particles emitted during storm events occurring in desert areas of northern China (Alashan desert, Inner Mongolia), known to act as one of the st...

[1] Atmospheric desert dust is potentially highly sensitive to changes in climate, carbon dioxide and human land use. In this study we use 6 different scenarios of the processes responsible for changes in source areas and explore changes in desert dust loading in pre-industrial and future climates, although all the scenario results are likely to be sensitive to the climate model simulations use...

Background & Aims: Despite improvements in public health in Iran, cutaneous leishmaniasis has become a growing health issue. About 90% of cutaneous leishmaniasis cases occur in 8 countries including Iran. Kala-azar or visceral leishmaniasis, as an important parasitic disease, is endemic in some areas of Iran. Mapping the distribution of parasitic diseases and determining their relations to geog...

Human infection by leptospires has highly variable clinical manifestations, which range from subclinical infection to fulminant disease. We conducted a population-based, cross-sectional seroepidemiologic study in Peru to determine potential relationships of environmental context to human exposure to Leptospira and disease associated with seroconversion. Three areas were studied: a flooded, urba...