Saffron is grown in arid and semi-arid regions in Iran in late autumn, winter and late spring with rainy season. It should be irrigated by supplemental basin irrigation. Since rainfall is usually delayed in autumn, therefore, a pre-flowering irrigation of about 100 mm is needed. In areas with a seasonal rainfall of 600 mm a post- flowering irrigation of about 50 mm is adequate for economical yi...

Determination of the amount of sugar in sugar beet is usually accomplished by polarimetric method in sugar industry. This method is not accurate due to impurities such as sodium, potassium and amino-nitrogen that are present and might cause some errors in the evaluation of the technical quality of sugar beet. In this research, 7309 samples of sugar beet from two semi- arid county, Isfahan and C...

Estimation of impervious surface area is important to the study of urban environments and social development, but surface characteristics, as well as the temporal, spectral, and spatial resolutions of remote sensing images, influence the estimation accuracy. To investigate the effects of regional environmental characteristics on the estimation of impervious surface area, we divided China into s...

Considerations of risk and vulnerability are key to understanding the dynamics of poverty. This study conceives vulnerability as expected poverty and illustrates a methodology to empirically assess household vulnerability using pseudo panel data derived from repeated cross sections augmented with historical information on shocks. Application of the methodology to data from rural Kenya shows tha...

Arid environment is a dry landscape or region that received an extremely low amount of precipitation. Arid areas are located where vegetation cover is sparse to almost nonexistent. Almost one third of earth land surface is arid or desert. Over desert areas, a number of land cover patterns can be observed. One example is given here for the Arabian Peninsula. The located area can be found in Fig....

Cynara cardunculus.L exhibits an important adaptability to arid and semi-arid regions where high salinity is frequently present. Aiming to introduce its cultivation in the Mediterranean environment especially in Tunisia, it seemed interesting to study seed germination of eight populations of cardoon in four concentrations of NaCl: 0g/L, 2g/L, 4g/L, and 8g/L. Our results showed a good variabilit...

Relatively little research has been expended on developing plants for use in urban desert landscapes or “xeriscapes.” However, because of reduced availability and increased cost of water, water conservation needs, and concerns for our environment, increased awareness and demand for arid-adapted landscape plants have developed. An especially important need is for groundcover requiring little wat...