SUNRISE OVER AR ABIA TERR A , looking east toward Utopia Planitia: This artist’s reconstruction of orbital images shows the margins of Vastitas Borealis, a vast, low plain where fl oodwaters from ancient channels may have ponded. Toward the center, the sun is casting its fi rst rays on the western rim of the crater Lyot. Many people venture into the desert for its starkness and simplicity, but ...

Panicum turgidum is one of the most drought resistant plants in the Egyptian desert. Five habitat types were selected for the study: sand dunes (North Sinai and in Wady El-Natrun), gravel desert, coastal plain, and water runnels of a wadi bed (South Sinai and Eastern Desert). About 47.4% of the studied sites were subjected to high grazing pressure, 26.3% to moderate grazing pressure; the remain...

Cele Oasis on the southern edge of Tarim Basin was used to investigate the impact of human activity on the soil environment of the oasis–desert ecotone during the oasis expansion process. Since farmland is extending into the oasis–desert ecotone during oasis expansion, reclaimed farmland and control plots within the ecotone were investigated. The variations in soil moisture, soil nutrients and ...

The spatio-temporal evolution of a downsized model for a desert dune is observed experimentally in a narrow water flow channel. A particle tracking method reveals that the migration speed of the model dune is one order of magnitude smaller than that of individual grains. In particular, the erosion rate consists of comparable contributions from creeping (low-energy) and saltating (high-energy) p...

a r t i c l e i n f o Deserts are often neglected in what concerns conservation funding. Ecotourism, an alternative land-use with ability to preserve threatened biodiversity, is also less developed in these arid lands. Since ecotourism can constitute a complementary approach to natural and cultural resources and to local economy development, more investment should be allocated to desert ecotour...

The conceptual elements and skills that promote the mastery of family medicine, such as contextual knowledge, continuity of care, the clinical interview, comprehensiveness, coordination, and so on, are often difficult to explain and to understand. Medicine is often learned through a mechanistic metaphor of biology and a military metaphor of war. However, these fundamental concepts of family med...

The Husab Sand Lizard (Pedioplanis husabensis Berger-Dell’Mour and Mayer, 1989) is a recently described lacertid lizard endemic to a small region in the central Namib Desert. Although this species is of conservation concern, very little is known about how this lizard functions in its environment. We used the doubly labeled water method to measure the field energetics in this lizard species and ...

Non-erodible elements such as stones and vegetation are key to controlling wind erosion dust emission in drylands. Stony deserts widely distributed the Gobi Desert, but effect of on have not been well studied, except under artificial conditions. In this study, we evaluated by measuring sand saltation threshold a stony desert Tsogt-Ovoo Mongolia, natural surface conditions during storms. We quan...