How anthropogenic climate change will affect hydroclimate in the arid regions of southwestern North America has implications for the allocation of water resources and the course of regional development. Here we show that there is a broad consensus among climate models that this region will dry in the 21st century and that the transition to a more arid climate should already be under way. If the...

Late Miocene to mid-Pleistocene sedimentary proxy records reveal that northwest Australia underwent an abrupt transition from dry to humid climate conditions at 5.5 million years (Ma), likely receiving year-round rainfall, but after ~3.3 Ma, climate shifted toward an increasingly seasonal precipitation regime. The progressive constriction of the Indonesian Throughflow likely decreased continent...

Climate change is generally predicted to increase net primary production, which could lead to additional C input to soil. In arid central Asia, precipitation has increased and is predicted to increase further. To assess the combined effects of these changes on soil CO2 efflux in arid land, a two factorial manipulation experiment in the shrubland of an arid region in northwest China was conducte...

Semi-arid ecosystems are key contributors to the global carbon cycle and may even dominate the inter-annual variability (IAV) and trends of the land carbon sink, driven largely by the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). The linkages between dynamics of semi-arid ecosystems and climate at the hemispheric scale however are not well known. Here, we use satellite data and climate observations from...

Farmers in semi-arid Zimbabwe prioritise climate variability as their major agricultural productivity-reducing problem. This paper raises the importance of considering local farmers’ perceptions on climate risk, as this greatly influences on-farm investments and decision-making in agricultural management and production in semiarid Zimbabwe. A study was conducted in two districts of semi-arid Zi...

There is currently no consensus on the importance of climate change in Mesoamerican prehistory. Some invoke drought as a causal factor in major cultural transitions, including the abandonment of many sites at 900 CE, while others conclude that cultural factors were more important. This lack of agreement reflects the fact that the history of climate change in many regions of Mesoamerica is poorl...

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Climate changes are predicted to increase extreme rainfall events in semiarid and arid region in Northern Hemisphere. Nutrient cycles will be affected by the precipitation changes but so far only very little is known how soil N transformations may respond. Here we investigated gross soil N transformation rates and their response to simulated rainfall events across Northeast China Transect (NECT...

a MOE Key Laboratory of Western China's Environmental Systems, Research School of Arid Environment and Climate Change, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China b MOE Key Laboratory of Arid and Grassland Ecology, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China c Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina 27708, USA d Department of Ecology, College of Urban and Environ...

Land degradation impacts on several critical environmental issues such as food security, diminishing quality and quantity of fresh water resources, preservation of natural resources, loss of biodiversity, and global climate change. Land degradation is responsible for soil erosion and can eventually lead to desertification. The International Convention to Combat Desertification (CCD) defines des...