Deserts are critical environments because they cover 41% of the world’s land surface and are home to 2 billion residents. As highly dynamic biomes desert expansion and contraction is influenced by climate and anthropogenic factors with variability being a key part of the desertification debate across dryland regions. Evaluating a major world desert, the Gobi in East Asia, with high resolution s...

We present lithology and fossil pollen data from a 384 cm sediment section from Qingtu paleolake in arid northwest China and discuss their environmental interpretations. The chronology was controlled by four accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dates on peat and bulk lake sediments. Lithology changes suggest a general sequence of local environment shifts from a non-lake environment b...

Lack of research into the complexity in urban land conversion, and paucity of observational data of soil organic carbon (SOC) beneath impervious surface area (ISA) limit our understanding of the urbanization effects on carbon (C) pools in dryland cities. Employing Landsat TM images acquired in 1990 and 2010, a hybrid classification method consisting of Linear Spectral Mixture Analysis and decis...

Seed dispersal and germination were examined for 70 species from the cold Gurbantunggut Desert in northwest China. Mean and range (3 orders of magnitude) of seed mass were smaller and narrower than those in other floras (5-8 orders of magnitude), which implies that selection favors relatively smaller seeds in this desert. We identified five dispersal syndromes (anemochory, zoochory, autochory, ...

Soil respiration (Rs) is a major pathway for carbon cycling and is a complex process involving abiotic and biotic factors. Biological soil crusts (BSCs) are a key biotic component of desert ecosystems worldwide. In desert ecosystems, soils are protected from surface disturbance by BSCs, but it is unknown whether Rs is affected by disturbance of this crust layer. We measured Rs in three types of...

Microdera punctipennis Kaszab (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae) is an endemic species in Guerbantonggut desert in China. To explore the ways that M. punctipennis egg adapts to dry desert environment, morphological characteristics of the egg was investigated along with the egg of the nondesert beetle Tenebrio molitor (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae). Water loss rate and survival rate of these eggs under di...

[1] Dust storms originating in the Gobi desert and the surrounding areas critically impact weather, climate, and public health in China and neighboring Pacific Rim countries. In the decades between 1954 and 2007, reports of annual dust storm occurrences and the corresponding amount of total precipitation at 753 Chinese meteorological sites show a reduction in the occurrence and intensity of dus...

Phragmites communis Trin. (common reed) is a recognized model plant for studying its adaptation to contrasting and harsh environments. To understand the inherent molecular basis for its remarkable resistance to combined stresses, we performed a comprehensive proteomic analysis of the leaf proteins from two ecotypes, i.e. swamp and desert dune, naturally growing in the desert region of northwest...

Understanding the formation and spatial-temporal distribution of soil salt crusts (SSCs) is important for the sustainable management of the artificial shelterbelt and high-salinity groundwater utility in the Taklimakan Desert in Northwest China. The SSCs in this area were sampled, and their thickness and electrical conductivity (EC) were analyzed to examine the formation mechanism and the spati...