Understanding the genetic basis of water use efficiency (WUE) and its roles in plant adaptation to a drought environment is essential for the production of second-generation energy crops in water-deficit marginal land. In this study, RNA-Seq and WUE measurements were performed for 78 individuals of Miscanthus lutarioriparius grown in two common gardens, one located in warm and wet Central China...

Green roofs have many benefits, but in countries with semiarid climates the amount of water needed for irrigation is a limiting factor for their maintenance. The use of drought-tolerant plants such as Sedum species, reduces the water requirements in the dry season, but, even so, in semiarid environments these can reach up to 60 L m-2 per day. Continuous substrate/soil water content monitoring w...

East Asia is a major dust source in the world. Mineral dusts in the atmosphere and their interactions with clouds and precipitation have great impacts on regional climate in Asia, where there are large arid and semiarid regions. In this review paper, we summarize the typical transport paths of East Asian dust, which affect regional and global climates, and discuss numerous effects of dust aeros...

N2-fixing, drought tolerant and multipurpose Acacia and Prosopis species are appropriate trees for reforestation of degraded areas in arid and semiarid regions of the tropics and subtropics. Acacia and Prosopis trees form N2-fixing nodules with a wide range of rhizobia, for example African acacias mainly with Sinorhizobium sp. and Mesorhizobium sp., and Australian acacias with Bradyrhizobium sp...

1. Previous studies in humid forests have shown that the 13 C and 15 N isotopic composition differs between ectomycorrhizal (ECM) and saprotrophic (SAP) fungi, and that this ECM–SAP ‘divide’ may provide a useful tool for evaluating fungal trophic status. 2. We evaluated whether this method could delineate the trophic status of fungi in two semiarid, temperate forests of the south-western USA. T...

Both water and nitrogen (N) availability have significant effects on ecosystem CO2 exchange (ECE), which includes net ecosystem productivity (NEP), ecosystem respiration (ER) and gross ecosystem photosynthesis (GEP). How water and N availability influence ECE in arid and semiarid grasslands is still uncertain. A manipulative experiment with additions of rainfall, snow and N was conducted to tes...

Machakos and Makueni counties in Kenya are associated with historical land degradation, climate change, and food insecurity. Both counties lie in lower midland (LM) lower humidity to semiarid (LM4), and semiarid (LM5) agroecological zones (AEZ). We assessed food security, dietary diversity, and nutritional status of children and women. Materials and Methods. A total of 277 woman-child pairs age...

Redistribution of soil, nutrients, and contaminants is often driven by wind erosion in semiarid shrublands. Wind erosion depends on wind velocity (particularly during episodic, high-velocity winds) and on vegetation, which is generally sparse and spatially heterogeneous in semiarid ecosystems. Further, the vegetation cover can be rapidly and greatly altered due to disturbances, particularly fir...