Late Quaternary histories of two North American desert biomesC4 grasslands and C3 shrublandsare poorly known despite their sensitivity and potential value in reconstructing summer rains and winter temperatures. Plant macrofossil assemblages from packrat midden series in the northern Chihuahuan Desert show that C4 grasses and annuals typical of desert grassland persisted near their present north...

2 Abstract Vegetation type and cover play an important role in the operation of geomorphological processes by controlling runoff and sediment dynamics. In drylands, land degradation is particularly sensitive to these eco-geomorphic interactions. Whilst many geomorphological studies of land degradation focus on the change in hydrological response as a function of vegetation cover, few have inves...

9 Across most Mediterranean-type climate regions, seasonal drought desiccates plants, facilitating ignition 10 and the spread of wildfires. Along the California coast, summertime fog has the potential to ameliorate 11 drought conditions and thus reduce plant flammability during a critical time of elevated fire risk. This 12 study investigated the uptake of dry season fog and how it affects live...

Question: Landscape models of fire occurrence in ecosystems assume that the time since the last fire determines vegetation flammability by enabling the accumulation of dead biomass. In this study we ask if Mediterranean Basin shrublands respond to these models or, on the contrary, if initial successional stages in these ecosystems could be more flammable than later stages. Location: Mediterrane...