Understanding the formation and spatial-temporal distribution of soil salt crusts (SSCs) is important for the sustainable management of the artificial shelterbelt and high-salinity groundwater utility in the Taklimakan Desert in Northwest China. The SSCs in this area were sampled, and their thickness and electrical conductivity (EC) were analyzed to examine the formation mechanism and the spati...

Geoengineering, the deliberate large-scale manipulation of earth's energy balance to counteract global warming, is an attractive proposition for sparsely populated deserts. We use the BNU and UVic Earth system models to simulate the effects of irrigating deserts under the RCP8.5 scenario. Previous studies focused on increasing desert albedo to reduce global warming; in contrast we examine how e...

OBJECTIVE To study the impacts of abundance of woodlice, termites, and mites on some functional aspects of soil in order to elucidate the specific role of soil fauna in improving soil fertility in desert. METHODS Fauna-rich sites were selected as experimental sites and adjacent areas were taken as control. Soil samples were collected from both sites. Soil respiration was measured at both site...

Background. Long-term vegetation changes in hyper-arid areas have long been neglected. Mortality, recruitment and change in populations of the ecologically and culturally important and drought persistent Acacia tortilis and Balanites aegyptiaca are therefore estimated in the Eastern Desert of Egypt, and are related to the primary agents of change, water conditions and human intervention. Method...

Desert-like areas located in the eastern portion of state Utah (USA) have geographic features that can resemble surface planet Mars, characterized by red-colored hills, soils and sandstones. We examined bacterial biodiversity soil samples from several sites Colorado Plateau Desert using pyrosequencing PCR amplified 16S rRNA genes total extracted DNA. The sample cover Great Basin, Goblin Valley ...

A number of recent policy interventions have focused on “food deserts,” areas where inhabitants have limited access to nutritious foods, as causal factors in the United States’ obesity epidemic. Yet in the city of St. Louis, many areas with high concentrations of high-risk, low-income households do not qualify as food deserts. I survey grocery and convenience stores in areas with differing leve...

Mitrani Department of Desert Ecology, Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Desert Animal Adaptations and Husbandry, Wyler Department of Dryland Agriculture, Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Midreshet Ben-Gurion, Israel, Department of Ecology and Environment Conservation, Omsk State Pedagogical Univ...

principle." This labelling is somewhat confusing given that desert as a limiting principle is neither new, having blossomed most recently with Norval Morris several decades ago, nor compatible with empirical desert. The latter provides a specific punishment amount, while the former claims that desert can only identify the extremes that mark the outer boundaries of a broad range of punishment. S...

Time and budget constraints have precluded the use of conventional mapping techniques for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to produce a comprehensive resource inventory of the California deserts region as mandated by the California Desert Conservation Act. A Landsat mosaic at full resolution for ten scenes over the California deserts region was used to provide a continuous data base for mUlti...