Rainwater harvesting (RWH) may be an effective alternative water supply solution in regions affected by water scarcity. It has recently become a particularly important option in arid and semi-arid areas (like Mediterranean basins), mostly because of its many benefits and affordable costs. This study provides an analysis of the reliability of using a rainwater harvesting system to supply water f...

Growing water scarcity is one of the central challenges for sustainability in China, given its burgeoning industry and huge population, especially in the arid and semi-arid inland river basin where precipitation is very limited. Industrial transformation is an important engine of economic growth, which is required to be implemented by governments at all levels in China. Economic models have gen...

plant biomass is an important factor for determining arid and semi-aridrangelands capacity. due to the lack of proper and annual sampling of rangelands, there areno suitable data to determine biomass, range condition and proper range managementoperations. plant biomass is one of the measurable attributes that can be assessed inrangeland studies. since the clip and weight method is destructive a...

this paper reports the results of using three empirical methods (makkink, priestley-taylor and hargreaves) for estimating the reference evapotranspiration (et0) in the semi-arid region of tensift al haouz, marrakech (center of morocco). the penman-monteith equation, standardized by the food and agriculture organization (fao-pm), is used to evaluate the three empirical methods. the obtained et0 ...

Present water scarcity is a severe problem and cause of deterioration in quality and productivity of crops to reduce crop yield in arid and semi-arid regions. Silicon is known to better the deleterious effects of drought on plant growth and development. Silicon (Si) found to be an agronomically important fertilizer element that enhances plant tolerance to abiotic stresses (Liang et al., 2005). ...

Few studies have investigated the influence of water availability on plant population spatial patterns. We studied changes in the spatial patterns of Caragana stenophylla along a climatic drought gradient within the Inner Mongolian Plateau, China. We examined spatial patterns, seed density, "nurse effects" of shrubs on seedlings, transpiration rates and water use efficiency (WUE) of C. stenophy...

Plants are often subjected to periods of soil and atmospheric water deficit during their life cycle. The frequency of such phenomena is likely to increase in the future even outside today's arid/semi-arid regions. Plant responses to water scarcity are complex, involving deleterious and/or adaptive changes, and under field conditions these responses can be synergistically or antagonistically mod...