this paper examines paradox in the symbols of the poem unsh?dat al-matar (‘song of rain’), composed by sh?kir al-sayy?b. it also investigates how meaning is developed in these symbols. in the symbols in this poetry, paradoxical themes like happiness and grief, rain and drought, and life and death emerge. the onomatopoeia ‘rain’, which forms the central image of this poetry, has the same paradox...

Quantifying the ecological patterns of loss of ecosystem function in extreme drought is important to understand the carbon exchange between the land and atmosphere. Rain-use efficiency [RUE; gross primary production (GPP)/precipitation] acts as a typical indicator of ecosystem function. In this study, a novel method based on maximum rain-use efficiency (RUEmax) was developed to detect losses of...

Global warming has resulted in increasingly frequent and severe drought and/or precipitation events. Severe drought limits crop water availability and impacts agricultural productivity and socioeconomic development. To quantify drought-induced yield loss during the main crop stages in Liaoning province, China, aspects of drought episodes (magnitude, duration, and frequency) were investigated du...

Plants from the genus Desmodium, in particular D. uncinatum, are used on sub-Saharan small-holder farms as intercrops to inhibit parasitism of cereal crops by Striga hermonthica and Striga asiatica via an allelopathic mechanism. The search for Desmodium species which are adapted to more arid conditions, and which show resilience to increased drought stress, previously identified D. intortum, D....

Southeast Texas houses a precipitation transition zone between drier conditions to the North and West and some of the wettest parts of the continental U.S. to the East. The Region has seen an increase in its reported normal annual precipitation totals in recent decades. In order to determine if the additional rainfall has been influenced by warming temperatures or is within the variability of t...

Supplemental irrigation under prolonged drought conditions has a key role in providing water for transpiration of rain-fed fig trees. The effect of different times and amounts of supplemental irrigation at different distances from the tree trunk on quantity and quality of Estahban rain-fed fig production was evaluated during two years. A randomized complete block design with four replications o...

and elevated ozone on tissue water relations of mature clones of a fast-growing genotype of ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa Dougl. ex Laws.) and their half-sib seedlings. Whole seedlings and branches of mature trees were exposed to acid rain (pH 5.1 and 3.0) and ozone (ambient and twice-ambient) treatments in open-bottomed chambers. The acid rain treatment was applied to foliage weekly from Jan...

Increases in drought-induced tree mortality are being observed in tropical rain forests worldwide and are also likely to affect the geographical distribution of tropical vegetation. However, the mechanisms underlying the drought vulnerability and environmental distribution of tropical species have been little studied. We measured vulnerability to xylem embolism (P50 ) of 13 woody species endemi...

Participatory epidemiology methods were employed retrospectively in three pastoralist regions of Ethiopia to estimate the specific causes of excess livestock mortality during drought. The results showed that starvation/dehydration accounted for between 61.5 and 100 per cent of excess livestock mortality during drought, whereas disease-related mortality accounted for between 0 and 28.1 per cent ...

agricultural drought has resulted in great damage to iran in recent years and it is crucial to cope with this adversity through logical management. one attempt in this regard is to compare affected sites and prioritize them for action plans. this paper develops a methodology for agricultural drought risk analysis based on rain-fed wheat data from kermanshah province and employs it to compare af...