Eco-geomorphology and vegetation patterns in arid and semi-arid regions P. M. Saco, G R. Willgoose, and G. R. Hancock School of Engineering, The University of Newcastle, Callaghan, New South Wales, 2308, Australia School of Environmental and Life Sciences, The University of Newcastle, Callaghan, New South Wales, 2308, Australia Received: 13 June 2006 – Accepted: 30 June 2006 – Published: 30 Aug...

Meteorological satellite data from 1982 to 1990 were used to identify areas of significant association between tropical Pacific sea surface temperature (SST) and remotely sensed normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) anomalies, here taken as a surrogate for rainfall anomalies. During this period, large areas of arid and semi-arid Africa, Australia and South America experienced NDVI anoma...

abstract this paper presents a quantitative account of vegetation–environmental factor relationships in arid rangelands. vegetation cover was recorded using braun-blanquet combined abundance-cover scale in each quadrat. within each quadrat, one profile was dug and soil samples being taken at 0-20cm and 20-100cm depths. under study physical-chemical characteristics included texture, lime, organi...

The scarcity of water characterising drylands forces vegetation to adopt appropriate survival strategies. Some of these generate water-vegetation feedback mechanisms that can lead to spatial self-organisation of vegetation, as it has been shown with models representing plants by a density of biomass, varying continuously in time and space. However, although plants are usually quite plastic they...

Riparian zones in semi-arid regions often exhibit high rates of evapotranspiration (ET) in spite of low soil moisture content due to vegetation that is able to withdraw water from shallow aquifers. This work better defines the relationship between ET and the saturated zone by comparing the observed water table drawdown to analytically modeled drawdown in fully penetrating wells of an unconfined...

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...