Dryland rivers are renowned for their periods of ‘boom’ related to the episodic floods that extend over vast floodplains and fuel incredible production, and periods of ‘bust’ where the extensive channel network is restricted to the permanent refugial waterholes. Many of these 15 river systems are unregulated by dams but are under increasing pressure, especially from water abstraction and overla...

Despite their large areas and potential importance as methane sinks, the role of methane-oxidizing bacteria (MOB) in native woodland soils is poorly understood. These environments are increasingly being altered by anthropogenic disturbances, which potentially alter ecosystem service provision. Dryland salinity is one such disturbance and is becoming increasingly prevalent in Australian soils. W...

[1] In dryland ecosystems, understanding the effects of heterogeneity in soil moisture and geophysical properties on vegetation structure and dynamics poses a suite of challenging research questions. Heterogeneity in soil depth can affect resource availability and the subsequent organization of woody vegetation, while spatiotemporal variation in soil moisture can reveal important ecohydrologica...

Variation in angiosperm vessel diameter is of major functional significance. In the light of recent models predicting optimal vessel taper given resistance imposed by conductive path length, we tested the prediction that plant size should predict vessel diameter, with dryland plants having narrower vessels for their stem sizes. We assembled a comparative dataset including vessel and stem diamet...

Context Production of rainfed (dryland) cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) occurs in many places globally, and is always burdened with greater uncertainties outcomes than irrigated cotton. Assessing farm financial viability helps farmers to make clearer more informed decisions a fuller awareness the potential risks their business.Aim We aimed highlight key points uncertainty common production quant...

the estimation of effective rainfall is an important technique for exploiting the rainwater resource, planning for irrigation in irrigated agriculture, and determining changes in dryland wheat products for country's macroeconomic management. in this research, a two-layer soil-water balance model based on a new approach has been formulated to estimate the effective rainfall in dryland wheat crop...

Previous syntheses on the effects of environmental conditions on the outcome of plant-plant interactions summarize results from pairwise studies. However, the upscaling to the community-level of such studies is problematic because of the existence of multiple species assemblages and species-specific responses to both the environmental conditions and the presence of neighbors. We conducted the f...

With uncertainty in future irrigation water availability and regulations on nutrient application amounts, experimentally determined effects of “controllable” management strategies such as nitrogen (N), water, and their combination on crop water productivity (CWP, also known as crop water use efficiency) and actual evapotranspiration (ETa) are essential. The effects of various N application rate...