Increasing aridity and drought severity forecast for many land areas could reduce the land carbon (C) sink. However, with limited long-term direct measures, it is difficult to distinguish direct drying effects from counter effects of CO2 enrichment and nitrogen (N) deposition. Here, we document a >50% decline in production of a native C3 grassland over four decades and assign the forcing and ti...

The soil mantle in Namaqualand is immature in terms of weathering. Despite or even because of this, the diversity and spatial variability of soil physical and chemical properties is exceptionally high and could be fundamental in governing biodiversity and ecosystem function. In arid landscapes, the way the soil sheds, admits, stores, diverts and transmits water is crucially important. Namaquala...

the present study illustrates the long-term changes in selected socioeconomic variables (population,industrial activities, settlement dispersion, and land-use) together with climate aridity trends in thriasio, the larger industrial area of greece located twenty kilometers far from athens. this region, originally devoted to agriculture, experienced fast industrial and economic development during...

Branched glycerol dialkyl tetraethers (brGDGTs) are membrane lipids of certain soil bacteria, and their relative distributions used as a proxy for air temperature pH. While is recorded by the degree methylation, pH reflected amount internal cyclization abundance 6-methyl isomers. Since exact producers brGDGTs remain enigmatic, mechanisms underlying empirical relationships with pH, thus reliabil...

Article history: Received 6 July 2005 Received in revised form 11 October 2005 Accepted 21 October 2005 Available online 4 January 2006 Global Climate Change (GCC) can bring about changes in ecosystems and consequently in their services value. Here we show that the urban population in Israel values the green landscape of rangelands in the mesic Mediterranean climate region and is willing to pay...

Land aridity has been projected to increase with global warming. Such projections are mostly based on off-line aridity and drought metrics applied to climate model outputs but also are supported by climate-model projections of decreased surface soil moisture. Here we comprehensively analyze soil moisture projections from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5, including surface, tota...

Aridity is a critical driver of the diversity and composition plant communities. However, how aridity influences phylogenetic structure functional groups (i.e. annual perennial species) far less understood than its effects on species richness. As perennials have to endure stressful conditions during summer drought, as opposed annuals that avoid it, they may be subjected stronger environmental f...