Climate is the most important factor which control desertification .In order to detect climate changes in desert zones, time trend analysis is applied to extreme indices in Kashan station using extreme climate index software (ECIS). Results show significant trends in extreme indices during the past decade 1995-2004 and the pronounced warming is associated with a negative trend in cold extremes....

climate is the most important factor which control desertification .in order to detect climate changes in desert zones, time trend analysis is applied to extreme indices in kashan station using extreme climate index software (ecis). results show significant trends in extreme indices during the past decade 1995-2004 and the pronounced warming is associated with a negative trend in cold extremes....

Early warning systems (EWS) tend to focus on the identification of slow onset disasters such famine and epidemic disease. Since hazardous environmental conditions often precede disastrous outcomes by many months, effective monitoring via satellite and in situ observations can successfully guide mitigation activities. Accurate short term forecasts of NDVI could increase lead times, making early ...

Although continents were coalesced into the single landmass Pangea, Late Triassic terrestrial tetrapod assemblages are surprisingly provincial. In eastern North America, we show that assemblages dominated by traversodont cynodonts are restricted to a humid 6° equatorial swath that persisted for over 20 million years characterized by "semiprecessional" (approximately 10,000-y) climatic fluctuati...

DNA barcoding is currently gaining popularity due to its simplicity and high accuracy as compared to the complexity and subjective biases associated with morphology-based identification of taxa. The standard chloroplast DNA barcode for land plants recommended by the Consortium for the Barcode of Life (CBOL) plant working group needs to be evaluated for a wide range of plant species. We th...

Geckos of the genus Rhoptropus are small diurnal lizards occurring in arid regions of Namibia and Angola, and are not well studied relative to other desert lizards. Rhoptropus afer has a field metabolic rate significantly lower than that of other desert lizards, but comparable studies have not been carried out in any other Rhoptropus species. We examined the field metabolic rate, water turnover...

In many arid and semiarid regions, saline playas represent a significant source of unconsolidated sediments available for aeolian transport, and severe saline dust storms occur frequently due to human disturbance. In this study, saline dust storms are reviewed systematically from the aspects of concept, general characteristics, conditions of occurrence, distribution and ecological impact. Our r...

We construct a state-and-transition model for mammals in tropical savannas in northern Australia to synthesize ecological knowledge and understand mammalian declines. We aimed to validate the existence of alternative mammal assemblage states similar to those in arid Australian grasslands, and to speculate on transition triggers. Based on the arid grassland model, we hypothesized that assemblage...

The linearized Boussinesq equation incorporating the effect of evapotranspiration with appropriate initial and boundary conditions was solved analytically to predict a fall in the water table in a bi-level drainage system. It was assumed that the evapotranspiration rate decreases linearly with a reduction in the elevation of the water table above the drains. A special case of this solution (i.e...