The extremely cold and arid Antarctic dry valleys are one of the most environmentally harsh terrestrial ecosystems supporting organisms in which the biogeochemical transformations of carbon are exclusively driven by microorganisms. The natural abundance of (13)C and (15)N in source organic materials and soils have been examined to obtain evidence for the provenance of the soil organic matter an...

Gravely calcareous soils cover approximately most of arid lands (in percent); however, the solute transport behavior in these soils remains a current issue. This research aimed at estimating and correlating the solute transport parameters in gravely calcareous soils as being affected by different land uses through the knowledge of the soil morphological, physical, and chemical properties. Four ...

Around the world, especially in semi-arid regions, millions of hectares of irrigated agricultural land are abandoned each year because of the adverse effects of irrigation, mainly secondary salinity and sodicity. Accurate information about the extent, magnitude, and spatial distribution of salinity and sodicity will help create sustainable development of agricultural resources. In Morocco, sout...

Prosopis juliflora (Swartz) DC is one of the most economically and/or ecologically important legumes in arid and semi-arid regions of the world. Prosopis was introduced into Sudan in early 20 century, and succeeded in controlling the expansion of desert in northern Sudan. Recently, however, this species distributes widely and rapidly in eastern Sudan, and induces many problems in human subsiste...

Salt-affected soils, caused by natural or human activities, are a common environmental hazard in semi-arid and arid landscapes. Excess salts in soils affect plant growth and production, soil and water quality and, therefore, increase soil erosion and land degradation. This research investigates the performance of five different semi-empirical predictive models for soil salinity spatial distribu...

remote sensing techniques are known as very useful methods for studying land use management in arid and semi arid areas, where undeveloped soils are dominant. these techniques can be used for determining different environmental characteristics including soil and vegetations. in this study etm+ band ratios and principal component analysis (pca) were used for monitoring of vegetation cover and it...

Wetting front instability (fingered flow) accelerates solute transport through the unsaturated zone to the groundwater table. Whether fingers widen or dissipate close to the groundwater is unclear. Water flow in a two-dimensional artificial capillary fringe below a dry layer exhibiting fingered flow was investigated. The flow diverged strongly in the wet soil, suggesting that fingers dissipate....