Drylands occupy 6 15 billion hectares (Bha) or 47 2% of the world's land area Of this, 3 5 to 4 0 Bha (57%65%) are e~ther deserl~fied or prone to deserlificat~on Desp~te the low soil organic carbon (SOC) concentratlon, total SOC pool of soils of the drylands IS 241 Pg (1 Pg = petagram = 10" g = I billion metrlc ton) or 15 5% of rhe world's rota1 of 1550 Pg to 1 -meter depth Desertification has ...

the effects of different climatic, soil, geometric, and management factors on soil organic carbon (soc) degradation and sequestration potential was evaluated in the semi-arid zone of mereg watershed, west of iran. two nonparametric methods, viz. classification and regression tree (cart) and feed forward back propagation artificial neural network (ann) were compared with parametric multivariate ...

Arid environment is a dry landscape or region that received an extremely low amount of precipitation. Arid areas are located where vegetation cover is sparse to almost nonexistent. Almost one third of earth land surface is arid or desert. Over desert areas, a number of land cover patterns can be observed. One example is given here for the Arabian Peninsula. The located area can be found in Fig....

To secure adequate food supply is the major challenge for humanity in the 21st century. Growing world population andits urbanization put pressure on this basic need, which is further threatened by the constant loss of fertile land. Theassessment of sustainability of food supply under increasing pressure on land resources has been selected as one of themost important priority topics ...

Rangeland ecosystems shift across dynamic thresholds between differentecological states in response to natural or human-induced factors. These differentecological states are the result of interactions among climate, soils, grazing history,and management practices. The notion of a single ‘‘pristine’’ final state is onlyconceptual in nature, and because of this, dynamic thresholds and the effects...

Desertification in north China is ongoing despite the endeavours to mitigate it over the past 50 years. Overall examination of the context of desertification and defects of desertification-combating programmes is a prerequisite for desertification control, which is now attracting general concern in China. The physiographic circumstances of north China, including the dry, continental, mid-latitu...

desertification leads to decrease in the ecosystem c pool and attendant reduction in soil organic carbon (soc). reclamation of sandy land in arid and semi-arid has a high potential to increase carbon sequestration and improving soil quality. our objective as to examine the changes in the soil carbon sequestration and soil properties of two soil layers (0–20 and 20-50 cm) under two types of recl...