Establishment of seedlings at early growth stages of crop plants as one of the most important determinants of high yield is severely affected by soil salinity. Therefore, high germination rate and vigorous early growth under saline soils is preferred. In this study 15 wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) cultivars were used to investigate the effects of three salinity concentrations including 4, 8 and ...

Desert pavement is a distinctive feature widespread across arid lands of the world. It plays a dynamic role in geomorphic, hydrologic, and ecologic processes. Where desert pavement predominates, infiltration is limited and rainfall is delivered as runoff to nearby bare ground areas where shrubs cluster. Desert pavement surfaces may appear monotonously flat and barren, but we have found, instead...

The ecosystem-level carbon uptake and respiration were measured under di€erent CO2 concentrations in the tropical rainforest and the coastal desert of Biosphere 2, a large enclosed facility. When the mesocosms were sealed and subjected to step-wise changes in atmospheric CO2 between daily means of 450 and 900 lmol mol, net ecosystem exchange (NEE) of CO2 was derived using the diurnal changes in...

Effects of dust particles on microwave radiation over the Taklamakan desert are studied with use of measurements from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR-E) on the EOS Aqua satellite and a microwave radiation transfer model. Eight observed cases show that the signal from atmospheric dust can be separated from the surface radiation by the fact that the dust particles produce stronge...

Harry Oppenheimer Okavango Research Centre, University of Botswana, Private Bag 285, Maun, Botswana e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]. University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, UK. e-mail : [email protected] 3 C S I R Environmentek, P.O. Box 395, Pretoria 0001, South Africa e-mail: csir.co.za Linkoping University, 581 83 Linkoping, Sweden e-mail: janl...

Strontium carbonate (SrCO3) is one of the most important strontium compounds that have been used in a variety of technological and industrial applications. In the present investigation, nano-structured strontium carbonate was synthesized by mechano-chemical reaction of celestite ore (SrSO4) collected from Dasht-e kavir, Iran and sodium carbonate during high energy mechanical milling.The milling...

Asian dust events transport the airborne bacteria in Chinese desert regions as well as mineral particles and influence downwind area varying biological ecosystems and climate changes. However, the airborne bacterial dynamics were rarely investigated in the Gobi desert area, where dust events are highly frequent. In this study, air samplings were sequentially performed at a 2-m high above the gr...

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...

1 The Remote Sensing Laboratory, Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Sede Boker Campus, Midreshet Ben-Gurion 84990, Israel; E-Mail: [email protected] 2 Institute of Agricultural Resources and Regional Planning, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, China; E-Mail: [email protected] 3 Laboratoire d’Optique Atmosphérique, Universi...

The Lut Block (Eastern Iran) extends over 900 km in a north-south direction and is only 200 km wide in an east-west direction. It is confined by the Nayband fault and Shotori Range on the west. The eastern edge is bordered by the Sistan suture zone and Nehbandan Fault. The northern termination of Lut Block is the depression of Kavir-e-Namak and the Great Kavir Fault. The Makran arc, including ...