Soil is one of the most important natural resources covering a large area of the land surface. Soil plays a vital role in biosphere processes, such as energy balance, hydrology, biochemistry, and biological productivity. It supports plants that supply foods, fibers, drugs, and some other human needs. Conversely, desert regions include about one third of earth lands and these regions have increa...

Water is a scarce commodity in desert regions; yet, most remote sensing experiments of soil moisture have been conducted in temperate areas. The ability to detect and reliably assess soil moisture in the arid environment has important implications both at the micro scale such as the individual farm and at the macro scale for climate modeling. A series of experiments utilizing an airborne scatte...

Methanogenesis is traditionally thought to occur only in highly reduced, anoxic environments. Wetland and rice field soils are well known sources for atmospheric methane, while aerated soils are considered sinks. Although methanogens have been detected in low numbers in some aerated, and even in desert soils, it remains unclear whether they are active under natural oxic conditions, such as in b...

Following water, nitrogen (N) is the most frequent limiting factor to aboveground net primary production in arid ecosystems. Increased water availability can stimulate both plant nitrogen uptake and microbial nitrogen mineralization, but may also stimulate losses from the ecosystem. Here, we assess the effect of water availability on nitrogen stocks and transformations in an arid ecosystem. We ...

soil is one of the most important natural resources covering a large area of the land surface. soil plays a vital role in biosphere processes, such as energy balance, hydrology, biochemistry, and biological productivity. it supports plants that supply foods, fibers, drugs, and some other human needs. conversely, desert regions include about one third of earth lands and these regions have increa...

Fruit flies of the genus Drosophila have independently invaded deserts around the world on numerous occasions. To understand the physiological mechanisms allowing these small organisms to survive and thrive in arid environments, we performed a phylogenetic analysis of water balance in Drosophila species from different habitats. Desert (cactophilic) species were more resistant to desiccation tha...

Alluvial fans develop at the base of drainages where feeder channels release their solid load (Blair and McPherson, 2009; Leeder et al., 1998; Harvey et al., 2005). A classic fan-shape forms where there is a well-defined topographic apex. Multiple feeder channels, however, often blur the fan-shape resulting in a merged bajada. Alluvial fans can be found in almost all terrestrial settings. These...

Particulate matters have detrimental effects on human health, environment and economic. This pollutant may emit from anthropogenic or natural sources. On global scale, main proportion of natural particulate matter release to the atmosphere because of wind erosion from arid and semi-arid regions. Recently, the amount of dust coming from Arabian countries has dramatically increased, especially du...

The wild arid and semi-arid plants of desert are used as food medicine by the people Desert. In this case study, selected were characterized physico-chemically for their nutritional mineral importance different analytical methods. Analysis showed that crude fibers protein dominated in plant samples among all nutrients with an average concentration 38% 21% respectively. edible parts generally hi...