BACKGROUND AND AIMS Parkinsonia aculeata (Caesalpinaceae) is a perennial legume with seeds that have hard-seeded (physical) dormancy and are potentially very long-lived. Seed dormancy is a characteristic that can both help maximize the probability of seedling establishment and spread the risk of recruitment failure across years (bet-hedging). In this study, dormancy-release patterns are describ...

Healthy soils provide the foundation for sustainable agriculture. However, soil health degradation has been a significant challenge agricultural sustainability and environmental quality in water-limited environments, such as arid semi-arid regions. Soils these regions is often characterized by low organic matter (SOM), poor fertility, overall productivity, thus limiting ability to build SOM. So...

Produced water (PW) is the main waste stream generated from oil and gas extraction. Nowadays, half of global PW volume managed through environmentally controversial expensive disposal practices, such as re-injection deep wells. In dry areas in Arabian Peninsula, could be reused to irrigate crops, creating environmental, economic social value. However, quality most PWs remains challenging their ...

Airborne aerosol is believed to be an important pathway for infectious disease transmissions like COVID-19 and influenza. However, the effects of dust event days on influenza have been rarely explored, particularly in arid environments. This study explores ambient particulate matter (PM) events laboratory-confirmed a semi-arid city. A descriptive analysis daily (influenza) cases, PM (PM10 PM2.5...

Virtual geographic environments (VGE) are environments pertaining to the relationship between post-humans and 3-D virtual worlds. Post-humans are defined as a combination of humans in the real world with 3-D avatars in 3-D virtual worlds. Five types of space, namely Internet space, data space, 3-D graphical space, personal perceptual and cognitive space, and social space are used to explore the...

In this paper, we address two challenging issues underlying spatial cognitive simulation using software agents immersed in Virtual Geographic Environments (VGE). First, the way to describe virtual VGE models using accurate spatial decomposition approaches structured using graph theory techniques. Second, the use of graph abstraction techniques to realistically support advanced navigation and pa...