Laysa Mabel de O. Fontes, Francisco Milton Mendes Neto, Alexandre A. A. Pontes Postgraduate Program in Computer Science, University of State of Rio Grande do Norte, Federal University of Semi-Arid, Mossoró, Brazil; Superintendent of Information Technology and Communication, Federal University of Semi-Arid, Mossoró, Brazil. Email: {laysa, miltonmendes, alexandreadames}@ufersa.edu.br Received Oct...

Land degradation impacts on several critical environmental issues such as food security, diminishing quality and quantity of fresh water resources, preservation of natural resources, loss of biodiversity, and global climate change. Land degradation is responsible for soil erosion and can eventually lead to desertification. The International Convention to Combat Desertification (CCD) defines des...

In recent years , tritium (the radioactive isotope of hydrogen) has been increasingly used as a r e search tool in chemistry, physics, biology, meteorology and hydrology. In a variety of investigations, such as the study of biological and metabolic processes, tritium or a chemical compound with tritium as one of the constituents can be used as a tracer. It is also useful in studying the effects...

Coccidioidomycosis occurs in arid and semi-arid regions of the New World from the western United States to Argentina. Highly endemic areas are present in the southwest United States. Coccidioides species live in the soil and produce pulmonary infection via airborne arthroconidia. The skin may be involved by dissemination of the infection, or by reactive eruptions, such as a generalized exanthem...

The spatial distribution of crops and farming systems in Africa is determined by the duration of the period during which crop and livestock water requirements are met. The length of growing period (LGP) is normally assessed from weather station data—scarce in large parts of Africa—or coarse-resolution rainfall estimates derived from weather satellites. In this study, we analyzed LGP and its var...

Variability in woody plant species, vegetation assemblages and anthropogenic activities derails the efforts to have common approaches for estimating biomass and carbon stocks in Africa. In order to suggest management options, it is important to understand the vegetation dynamics and the major drivers governing the observed conditions. This study uses data from 29 sentinel landscapes (4640 plots...

A minimum composite method was applied to produce a 15-day interval normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) dataset from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) daily 250 m reflectance in the red and near-infrared bands. This dataset was applied to determine lake surface areas in Mongolia. A total of 73 lakes greater than 6.25 km2in area were selected, and 28 of these lakes ...

The arid and semi-arid regions comprise more than forty present of the Earth’s land surface on which a large number people situated largely engaged in agriculture to meet their basic needs.

Agave is a good source of polysaccharides for the production of fermentable sugars as sustainable bioenergy feedstock solutions for semi-arid and arid lands. This plant grows in arid areas, which correspond to a large territory in northern Mexico. Having lignocellulose as the polysaccharide of interest, the information for the enzymatic saccharification of this kind of material is limited. Agav...