Despite El Niño events being one of the main forces shaping the coastal desert vegetation in South America, the impacts of the high precipitation typical of this rare but recurrent climatic event remain understudied. Here we monitored the plant community of a coastal lomas, a seasonal desert ecosystem, during 1998 and 2001 to analyse its changes during the 1997-98 El Niño and the following La N...

In recent decades, global climate change has made natural hazards increasingly prevalent. Droughts, as a common hazard, have been hot study topic for years. Most studies conducted drought monitoring in arid and semi-arid regions. humid sub-humid regions, due to change, seasonal droughts water shortages were often observed too, but not well studied. This study, using MODIS satellite-based aridit...

Th e incorporation of plant biomass (litter/prunned residues) into the soil constitutes an important pathway for nutrient cycling in ecosystems. Th e feasibility of meeting N needs of tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill) with short-duration pigeon pea fallow was studied in the fi eld in Akure, a humid zone of Nigeria. Th e trials were set up on site where late season pigeon pea – maize intercr...

A total of 823 farrowing records representing five genetic groups of pigs Nigerian local pigs (NP), the Large White (LW), NP×LW, (NP×LW) ×LW, and (NP×LW) ×NP were used to investigate the effect of pig genotype on litter performance under the humid tropical conditions of Southwestern Nigeria. Past data records spanning a period of 12 years (1979 1990) were collected from the Swine Unit of the Un...

This paper summarizes a series of field experiments that investigated the effects of organic and inorganic nutrients on sweet potato tuber yield in the humid lowlands of Papua New Guinea. In the first experiment, plots were planted with Piper aduncum, Gliricidia sepium and Imperata cylindrica, which were slashed after one year, whereafter sweet potato was planted. Sweet potato yield was lowest ...

The thermal environment outdoors affects human comfort and health. Mental and physical performance is reduced at high levels of air temperature being a problem especially in tropical climates. This paper deals with human comfort in the warm-humid city of Guayaquil, Ecuador. The main aim was to examine the influence of urban micrometeorological conditions on people's subjective thermal perceptio...

of meningococcal meningitis occur in areas with particular environmental characteristics. We present evidence that the relationship between the environment and the location of these epidemics is quantifiable and propose a model based on environmental variables to identify regions at risk for meningitis epidemics. These findings, which have substantial implications for directing surveillance act...

Agricultural chemical transport to surface water and the linkage to other hydrological compartments, principally ground water, was investigated at five watersheds in semiarid to humid climatic settings. Chemical transport was affected by storm water runoff, soil drainage, irrigation, and how streams were linked to shallow ground water systems. Irrigation practices and timing of chemical use gre...

EVERY GREENKEEPER heaves a sigh of relief when he realizes that another summer, with all the worries that with it, has passed. There is always more -or less injury to fine turf on golf ccmrsee during the extreme summer weather atid usually some particular area of the country gets more than its share of turf trouble. This summer has probably set a record for the wide extent of putting green twrf...

We investigated depth of water uptake of trees on shale-derived soils in order to assess the importance of roots over a meter deep as a driver of water use in a central Pennsylvania catchment. This information is not only needed to improve basic understanding of water use in these forests but also to improve descriptions of root function at depth in hydrologic process models. The study took pla...