Thar region of Rajasthan, with its varied characteristics in culture, economies, the environment, governance and religion, is home to semi-urban and urban agriculture that seems to have originated in the Fertile Crescent of the homeland of the first farmers. Arid lands and deserts make up a large part of Rajasthan. Two-thirds of the state is desert or dry-lands. Half the state’s population is f...

Many downscaling algorithms have been proposed to address the issue of coarse-resolution land surface temperature (LST) derived from available satellite-borne sensors. However, few studies have focused on improving LST downscaling in arid regions (especially in deserts) because of inaccurate remote sensing LST products. In this study, LST was downscaled by a random forest model between LST and ...

Desert locust swarms intermittently damage crops and pastures in sixty countries from Africa to western Asia, threatening the food security of 10% of the world’s population. During the 20th century, desert locust control operations began organizing, and nowadays, they are coordinated by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which promotes a preventative strategy based on early warning an...

– The desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii) has traditionally been viewed as an archetypal desert-adapted vertebrate. However, evidence from historical ecology, phylogenetics, anatomy, physiology, and biogeography qualifies this view significantly. Ancestors of G. agassizii stabilized as an essentially modern morph some 17-19 million yrs ago ago, perhaps 12 million yrs before the formation of ma...

Zoning and Monitoring of Meteorological Drought in Arid Desert Areas using SPI, SIAP PN indices (Case Study: Zahedan Plain)

Knowledge of the distribution patterns of soil organic carbon (SOC) and factors that influence these patterns is crucial for understanding the carbon cycle. The objectives of this study were to determine the spatial distribution pattern of soil organic carbon density (SOCD) and the controlling factors in arid desert grasslands of northwest China. The above- and belowground biomass and SOCD in 2...

Desert plants are exposed to a combination of environmental stress conditions, including water deficit, high temperature and high irradiance. We focused on antioxidative protection systems of C4 desert plant Haloxylon ammodendron and C3 desert plant Hedysarum scoparium within arid dune ecosystem with artificial controlling water availability. The activities of antioxidative enzymes (SOD, POD an...

Desert pavement is a distinctive feature widespread across arid lands of the world. It plays a dynamic role in geomorphic, hydrologic, and ecologic processes. Where desert pavement predominates, infiltration is limited and rainfall is delivered as runoff to nearby bare ground areas where shrubs cluster. Desert pavement surfaces may appear monotonously flat and barren, but we have found, instead...

Introduction: Mars Global Surveyor Thermal Emission Spectrometer data indicate regions with significant levels of hematite (_Fe2O3). Fe-oxides, like hematite, can form as aqueous mineral precipitates and as such may preserve microscopic fossils or other biosignatures. Several potential terrestrial analogues to martian hematite like hydrothermal vents have preserved microfossils [1]. Microbial f...