Immediately before human settlement, dense tall podocarp-angiosperm forest dominated the moist Southland and southern coastal Otago districts. Open, discontinuous podocarp-angiosperm forest bordered the central Otago dry interior, extending along the north Otago coast. Grassland was mostly patchy within these woody ecosystems, occurring on limited areas of droughty or low-nutrient soils and wet...

Prediction of soil characteristics over large areas is desirable for environmental modeling. In arid environments, soil characteristics often show strong ecological connectivity with natural vegetation, specifically biomass and/or canopy cover, suggesting that the soil characteristics may be predicted from vegetation data. The objective of this study was to predict soil infiltration characteris...

soil moisture is one of the critical parameters in climatic, ecological and hydrological modeling and vegetation growth. soil moisture is important for environmental studies but due to ground-based point measurement of soil moisture is expensive and impractical for watershed measurement, this parameter is not be used widely to simulate and predict models. overall and uniform view on different p...

The ecological and economical importance of African grasses in sustaining animal production prompted studies to quantify the wealth grass genetic resources indigenous southern Africa. Plant collection occurrence data were extracted from two datasets, BODATSA PHYTOBAS, analysed establish biogeographical patterns flora South Africa, Lesotho Eswatini. A total 1 648 quarter degree grid cells, repre...

Vegetation patterns are abundant in arid and semiarid ecosystems, but how they form remains unclear. One of the most extended theories lies in the existence of scale-dependent feedbacks (SDF) in plant-to-plant and plant-water interactions. Short distances are dominated by facilitative interactions, whereas competitive interactions dominate at larger scales. These feedbacks shape spatially inhom...

Abstract This paper presents a quantitative account of vegetation–environmental factor relationships in arid rangelands. Vegetation cover was recorded using Braun-Blanquet combined abundance-cover scale in each quadrat. Within each quadrat, one profile was dug and soil samples being taken at 0-20cm and 20-100cm depths. Under study physical-chemical characteristics included texture, lime, orga...

More than one-third of the earth is characterized by arid and semi-arid climate and desertification phenomenon in these areas has been intensified in recent decades. This study aims to investigate the trend of desertification using vegetation indices and Iranian Model of Desertification Potential Assessment (IMDPA) in Abarkooh Plain, Yazd province, Iran. The satellite images (Landsat images in ...

We assembled a molecular phylogeny for the arid-zone members of the Egernia whitii species group to test Pianka's [Zoogeography and speciation of Australian desert lizards: an ecological perspective, Copeia (1972) 127-145] hypothesis that habitat specificity to the three major arid-zone vegetation communities is the primary cause of lizard speciation within the arid interior of Australia. This ...