Salt-affected soils, caused by natural or human activities, are a common environmental hazard in semi-arid and arid landscapes. Excess salts in soils affect plant growth and production, soil and water quality and, therefore, increase soil erosion and land degradation. This research investigates the performance of five different semi-empirical predictive models for soil salinity spatial distribu...

Current global changes are putting both biodiversity and the processes that depend on it at risk. This is especially true for semi-arid regions and the flagship groups that inhabit them, such as amphibians and reptiles. Semi-arid regions are often thought to have lower biodiversity and thus have been overlooked, resulting in the underestimation of their biological richness. Therefore, the aim o...

water erosion is a major environmental problem in many parts of the world. majority of semi-arid countries are concerned because of their specific climate and soils sensitivity, but also because of the recent intensification of human activities and agricultural practices. accurate estimation of water erosion for various land-use and climate scenarios is so an important key to define sustainable...

Interactive Digital Television (iDTV) has facilitated and expanded the communication and interaction in activities of knowledge acquisitions, entertainment, and recreation in the distance learning field. This new way of teaching and learning has been called t-Learning. In this context, the Learning Objects (LOs) have an important role in assisting in the electronic courses’ development. Due the...

BACKGROUND Agrobiodiversity is said to contribute to the sustainability of agricultural systems and food security. However, how this is achieved especially in smallholder farming systems in arid and semi-arid areas is rarely documented. In this study, we explored two contrasting regions in Benin to investigate how agroecological and socioeconomic contexts shape the diversity and utilization of ...

Citation: Niu X, Song L, Xiao Y and Ge W (2018) Drought-Tolerant Plant Growth-Promoting Rhizobacteria Associated with Foxtail Millet in a Semi-arid Agroecosystem and Their Potential in Alleviating Drought Stress. Front. Microbiol. 8:2580. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2017.02580 Drought-Tolerant Plant Growth-Promoting Rhizobacteria Associated with Foxtail Millet in a Semi-arid Agroecosystem and Their Pote...

Goji (fruits of Lycium barbarum L. and L. chinense Mill.) has been used in China as food and medicine for millennia, and globally has been consumed increasingly as a healthy food. Ningxia, with a semi-arid climate, always had the reputation of producing best goji quality (daodi area). Recently, the increasing market demand pushed the cultivation into new regions with different climates. We ther...

Laysa Mabel de O. Fontes, Francisco Milton Mendes Neto, Alexandre A. A. Pontes Postgraduate Program in Computer Science, University of State of Rio Grande do Norte, Federal University of Semi-Arid, Mossoró, Brazil; Superintendent of Information Technology and Communication, Federal University of Semi-Arid, Mossoró, Brazil. Email: {laysa, miltonmendes, alexandreadames}@ufersa.edu.br Received Oct...