Holocene colluvial and alluvial stratigraphy and a radiocarbon chronology are presented for the valley of the lower three kilometers of Raven Fork, a mountain stream draining 194 km2 of high relief (1.3 km) terrain of the Southern Blue Ridge Mountains in western North Carolina, USA, which is in a region that lacks good chronological data. Lower hillslopes, alluvial/ colluvial fans, alluvial bot...

The Atacama Desert has experienced a long and protracted period of hyperaridity that has resulted in what may be the most unusual biome on Earth, but the duration of this aridity is poorly constrained. We reconstructed aspects of the fl uvial and geochemical history of this region using integrated landscape features (alluvial fans, hillslope soils, soil chemistry, river profi les) in the southe...

Over the past several thousand years, arid and semiarid China has experienced a series of asynchronous desertification events in its semiarid sandy and desert regions, but the precise identification of the driving forces of such events has remained elusive. In this paper we identify two rapid desertification events (RDEs) at ~4.6 ± 0.2 ka BP and ~3.3 ± 0.2 ka BP from the JJ Profile, located in ...

The large-scale reuse of untreated domestic sewage for irrigation is commonplace in many arid and semiarid zones of Latin America, as a result of increasing population pressures, water shortages, and protein shortfalls. Twenty per cent of the land is arid or semiarid, having only 5% of the water resources of the Region; but this land supports 60% of the population (367 million people in 1983-I)...

In many arid and semiarid regions, saline playas represent a significant source of unconsolidated sediments available for aeolian transport, and severe saline dust storms occur frequently due to human disturbance. In this study, saline dust storms are reviewed systematically from the aspects of concept, general characteristics, conditions of occurrence, distribution and ecological impact. Our r...

A landscape’s sediment grain size distribution is the product of, and an important influence on, earth surface processes landscape evolution. Grains can be large enough that motion of a single grain, infrequently mobile in size-selective transport systems, constitutes or triggers significant geomorphic change. We define these grains as boulders. Boulders affect evolution; their dynamics effects...

The dromedary camel is a multipurpose animal adapted to the harsh environments of semiarid and arid zones, essentially kept for milk and meat production and transportation. It is also a financial reserve (asset) and security (drought-prone risk management) for pastoralists and plays an important role in social prestige and wealth (8, 19). Because of the increasing desertification and recurrence...