To address devastating land desertification and soil erosion and to improve human well-being, central government in China has implemented a number of ecological restoration programs. It is essential to rigorously monitor the dynamic of vegetation activity and evaluate the effectiveness of these programs, not only to provide scientific support for ecosystem monitoring in arid and semi-arid regio...

Late Pliocene and Pleistocene climatic instability has been invoked to explain the buildup of Neotropical biodiversity, although other theories date Neotropical diversification to earlier periods. If these climatic fluctuations drove Neotropical diversification, then a large proportion of species should date to this period and faunas should exhibit accelerated rates of speciation. However, the ...

Variability is an inherent characteristic of neritic fisheries. This is usually associated with both heavy fishing and changes in environmental conditions. Consideration needs to be given to the biological, physical and human components of the management system. This includes controlling the type, size and amount of fish harvested; trying to respond in a timely manner to events in the fishery i...

The duration of survival of both the S and C strains of Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis in feces was quantified in contrasting climatic zones of New South Wales, Australia, and detailed environmental temperature data were collected. Known concentrations of S and C strains in feces placed on soil in polystyrene boxes were exposed to the environment with or without the provision of sh...

We study the temporal pattern of selected respiratory diseases and the influence of specific weather parameters on their morbidity in two eco-climatic zones in Nigeria for the period 19962006. Out of 2,056 and 2,647 cases of respiratory diseases (bronchial asthma, bronchopneumonia, lobar pneumonia, bronchiolitis, cardiac asthma, pulmonary tuberculosis, sinusitis, tonsillitis and upper respirato...

Ganoderma lucidum, commonly known as Rieshi or Lingzhi is a white-rot fungus of division basidiomycetes. G. lucidum is an important species from economical and medicinal point of view. Wild G. lucidum samples collected from four agro-climatic zones of Haryana state were oven-dried and analyzed for proximate, mineral and antinutrient compositions. The samples contained moisture content in the ra...

Tropical infectious disease prevalence is dependent on many socio-cultural determinants. However, rainfall and temperature frequently underlie overall prevalence, particularly for vector-borne diseases. As a result these diseases have increased prevalence in tropical as compared to temperate regions. Specific to tropical Africa, the tendency to incorrectly infer that tropical diseases are unifo...

The ongoing changes in the global climate expose the world’s ecosystems not only to increasing CO2 concentrations and temperatures but also to altered precipitation (P) regimes. Using four well-established process-based ecosystem models (LPJ, DayCent, ORCHIDEE, TECO), we explored effects of potential P changes on water limitation and net primary production (NPP) in seven terrestrial ecosystems ...

Adjustments in mitochondrial properties and capacities are crucial in acclimatization to seasonal cold as well as in evolutionary cold adaptation of marine ectotherms. To examine whether gene expression mechanisms contribute to different settings of aerobic capacities in populations of cod (Gadus morhua) along a latitudinal cline, maximum activities of key enzymes of mitochondrial metabolism an...

This study examines the marketing system of small ruminants in three different agro-climatic zones of Karnataka in India. Multistage random sampling technique was used to select 60 small ruminant farmers from three viz. Bijapur (Arid zone), Gulbarga (Semi-arid zone) and Udupi (Coastal zone) district of Karnataka state. A structured questionnaire which had earlier been subject to face validity a...