Soil moisture exhibits spatial and temporal variability. Spatial variability is mostly associated to climatology patterns, topography, soil texture, and vegetation index; where as, temporal variability is primarily associated to rainfall and air temperature events. The spatial variability is modeled by a long-term memory model whereas the temporal variability by a short-term memory model. The l...

A variety of environmental processes, including topography, edaphic and disturbance factors can influence vegetation composition. The relative influence of these patterns has been known to vary with scale, however, few studies have focused on environmental drivers of composition at the mesoscale. This study examined the relative importance of topography, catchment flow and soil in influencing t...

The soil erosion is the most serious environmental problem in watershed areas in Turkey. The main factors affecting the amount of soil erosion include vegetation cover, topography, soil, and climate. In order to describe the areas with high soil erosion risks and to develop adequate erosion prevention measures in the watersheds of dams, erosion risk maps should be generated considering these fa...

As the world's population increases, marginal lands such as drylands are likely to become more important for food production. One proven strategy for improving crop production in drylands involves shifting from conventional tillage to no-till to increase water use efficiency, especially when this shift is coupled with more intensive crop rotations. Practices such as no-till that reduce soil dis...

topography and climate are two important soil forming factors affecting genesis and clay mineralogy of soils. calcareous and gypsiferous soils are widely spread in arid and semiarid parts of iran and palygorskite is a dominant clay mineral in these soils. the objectives of the study were to: (1) determine soil genesis and classification along the climotoposequence and (2) investigate clay miner...

Plant rooting depth affects ecosystem resilience to environmental stress such as drought. Deep roots connect deep soil/groundwater to the atmosphere, thus influencing the hydrologic cycle and climate. Deep roots enhance bedrock weathering, thus regulating the long-term carbon cycle. However, we know little about how deep roots go and why. Here, we present a global synthesis of 2,200 root observ...

The ecohydrological controls on soil erosion and landscape evolution are difficult to quantify and poorly understood. In many parts of the world, cyclone-induced tree throw is a major source of disturbance. Tree throw may increase sediment transport by exposing a mound of fresh soil as well as providing a pit which may act as a knickpoint triggering gully erosion. Alternatively, while tree thro...

During recent decades large changes in vegetation biomass have been observed in arctic and alpine areas. While these temporal trends have been clearly linked to changing climatic conditions, the drivers of local spatial variation in biomass are still relatively poorly understood. Thus, we examine the effects of abiotic conditions (as measured by ten variables representing topography, soil prope...