tourism as a growing industry needs special attention in developing countries. during last decades, nature based tourism has been growing faster than other tourism fields and it seems to grow even faster. ever growing demand for nature based tourism emphasizes the necessity of a holistic planning for preserving environment against degradation. objective of this study is to present a nature base...

Helminths cause great economic loss in livestock in Africa, and can be categorized as either direct or indirect losses. Arid and semi-arid lands (ASAL) in Kenya comprise 71% of total land area and harbour the largest population of cattle, sheep and goats. However, little information on the distribution and impact of gastro-intestinal (GIT) parasitism in these animals is available. This survey w...

Salinization is an important and increasingly prevalent issue which has broad and profound effects on plant survival and distribution pattern. To understand the patterns and potential drivers of leaf traits in saline environments, we determined the soil properties, leaf morphological traits (specific leaf area, SLA, and leaf dry matter content, LDMC), leaf chemical traits (leaf carbon, C, nitro...

Desert ecosystems spanning moisture conditions from dry grasslands to barren hyper-arid landscapes are the largest terrestrial biome with more than 40% of the terrestrial landmass. Remote sensing data provide an efficient costeffective means to assess biophysical indicators of land degradation and desertification, providing that essential ecosystem properties can be monitored. We review the spe...

In semiarid or arid conditions, the change of root-zone soil moisture can be almost instantaneously reflected by vegetation through biophysical process. This study investigated feasibility of mapping root-zone soil moisture using MODIS-derived NDVI via statistic approach at three sites (New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas) selected from the Soil Climate Analysis Network (SCAN). These three sites rep...

About 80 percent of Iran is arid and semi-arid and about 35 percent of this area is susceptible to desertification hazard. Therefore desertification assessment and identification of the most important criteria for the assessment of risk and a basis for development of management plans is essential. This research was conducted in the semi-arid region of Agh-Band in the Golestan province, Iran wit...

One of the characters in Iranian Model of Desertification Potential Assessment (IMDPA) is soil. Since soil is very important in the degradation of land, so some indices were determined for this character in order to evaluate desertification potential of arid, semi-arid and dry sub humid areas of Iran. The indices included soil texture, deep gravel percentage, soil depth, and EC. To calibrate th...