Ecologists increasingly use plot-scale data to inform research and policy related to regional and global environmental change. For soil chemistry research, scaling from the plot to the region is especially difficult due to high spatial variability at all scales. We used a hierarchical Bayesian model of plot-scale soil nutrient pools to predict storage of soil organic carbon (oC), inorganic carb...

Stopping-over is critical for migrating birds. Yet, our knowledge of bird stopover distributions and their mechanisms near wide ecological barriers limited. Using low elevation scans three weather radars covering 81,343 km 2 , we quantified large-scale departure patterns during spring autumn (2014–2018) in between two major barriers, the Sahara Desert Mediterranean Sea. Boosted Regression Tree ...

Deserts are one of the major landforms on the Earth. While deserts occupy about one-fifth of Earth’s land surface, they have been studied to a much lesser extent. All over the world, desert landforms are expanding ever rapidly and more and more human settlements are finding place in desert regions for habitation. Thus, quantifying and monitoring dunes becomes more relevant from a managerial per...

The distribution of Beck's Desert Scorpion, Paruroctonus becki (Gertsch and Allred, 1965), spans the 'warm' Mojave Desert and the western portion of the 'cold' Great Basin Desert. We used genetic analyses and species distribution modeling to test whether P. becki persisted in the Great Basin Desert during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), or colonized the area as glacial conditions retreated and ...

Terrace farming installations occupy vast desert areas in the Southern Levant. Their construction harsh environments raises critical questions focusing on natural, political, and economic circumstances promoting their operation. The present review, based new observations previously published materials, focused three different arid regions located across Levant, namely Eastern Marmarica of North...

ABSTRACT Aspergillus spp. in section Flavi were frequently associated with desert tree legumes in uncultivated areas of the Sonoran Desert. Of 270 samples of debris and fruits of mesquite (Prosopis spp.), ironwood (Olneya tesota), acacia (Acacia spp.), and palo verde (Cercidium and Parkinsonia spp.), 87% were positive for A. flavus (S and L strains) and A. tamarii. A. flavus was the most common...

Animals often move in a variety of complex habitats and they often exhibit morphological variation that can be explained, at least in part, by the habitat in which they live. The habitats of animals are often generally categorised based on dominant structures. Although this scheme can be fruitful, it ignores the intricacies of the microhabitat and the actual habitat utilisation of an animal. Th...