Allometric models are useful for assessment of aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP) and aboveground biomass (AGB) of forests and shrubs, and are widely implemented in forest inventory and management. Multiple forms of allometric models have been used to estimate vegetation carbon storage for desert shrubland, but their validity for biomass estimation has not been tested at a region scale...

Thermal discomfort is one the major challenges during work in hot and/or humid environments like mines, foundries and arid/desert regions. Heat and moisture management is the key to prevent the workers from heat stress. Personnel protective garments alone are not sufficient to provide thermal neutrality. Auxiliary cooling garments are required to aid the process of human body cooling. This revi...

We compare the properties and activation of heat-shock transcription factor (HSF1) and the synthesis of a major family of heat-shock proteins (HSP70) in lizard species inhabiting ecological niches with strikingly different thermal parameters. Under normal non-heat-shock conditions, all desert-dwelling lizard species studied so far differ from a northern, non-desert species (Lacerta vivipara) in...

Understanding the relationships between environmental variables and wildlife activity is an important part of effective management. The desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii), an imperiled species of arid environments in the southwest US, may have increasingly restricted windows for activity due to current warming trends. In summer 2013, we deployed 48 motion sensor cameras at the entrances of to...

Ensuring the persistence of at-risk species depends on implementing conservation actions that ameliorate threats. We developed and implemented a method to quantify the relative importance of threats and to prioritize recovery actions based on their potential to affect risk to Mojave desert tortoises (Gopherus agassizii). We used assessments of threat importance and elasticities of demographic r...

Desert halophytes are a special plant group widely distributed in desert ecosystems. Studying their ecological stoichiometric characteristics is helpful for understanding nutrient utilization and survival strategies. In this study, three functional groups of halophyte shrubs (euhalophytes, pseudohalophytes, secretohalophytes) were studied the Xinjiang desert, leaves relationships with soil fact...

We assessed the effect that varying patterns of biomass allocation had on growth of ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) growing in the desert climate of the Great Basin and the montane climate of the eastern Sierra Nevada. Prior work established that desert trees have lower leaf: sapwood area ratios than montane trees (0.104 and 0.201 M2/ cm2, respectively) and proportionally greater stem respirat...

Anthropogenic water sources (AWS) are developed water sources used as a management tool for desert wildlife species. Studies documenting the effects of AWS are often focused on game species; whereas, the effects on non-target wildlife are less understood. We used live trapping techniques to investigate rodent abundance, biomass, and diversity metrics near AWS and paired control sites; we sample...

Time and budget constraints have precluded the use of conventional mapping techniques for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to produce a comprehensive resource inventory of the California deserts region as mandated by the California Desert Conservation Act. A Landsat mosaic at full resolution for ten scenes over the California deserts region was used to provide a continuous data base for mUlti...