The Middle Stone Age (MSA) was a time of great human adaptation and innovation. In southern Africa, coastal locations have been viewed as key places for the development resource use behaviour, with dryness continental interior after c.130 ka regarded both an obstacle to occupation limit on behaviour. Newly excavated MSA sites floor now-dry palaeolake Makgadikgadi basin, central Botswana, along ...

Understanding soil erosion responses to cropland expansion/shrinking plays a crucial role in regional agriculture sustainability development drylands. We selected Inner Mongolia, typical water resource constraints region with acute expansion, as the study area China. Spatial evolution and its impact on wind-driven were investigated help of field sampling data, remotely sensed retrieved revised ...

The scope for enhancement of productivity under irrigated conditions is limited due to over-exploitation available resources However, there ample opportunity boosting yield in drylands by adopting suitable crops and cropping systems. agricultural sustainability comparatively hard achieve different constraints like poor soil fertility, lack irrigation facilities moisture stress, small holdings l...

Two major forms of vegetation patterns have been observed in drylands: nearly periodic patterns with characteristic length scales, and amorphous, scale-free patterns with wide patch-size distributions. The emergence of scale-free patterns has been attributed to global competition over a limiting resource, but the physical and ecological origin of this phenomenon is not understood. Using a spati...

In the Asia/Pacific region there is evidence of prominent increases in the intensity and/or frequency of many extreme events such as heat waves, tropical cyclones, prolonged dry spells, intense rainfall, tornadoes, snow avalanches, thunderstorms, and severe dust storms in the region. Furthermore, the region is highly subject to natural hazards, such as the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, the 2005 Pa...

Manganiferous rock varnish (desert varnish) is common in subtropical deserts, but coatings of amorphous silica glaze dominate rock surfaces of the same lithology and exposed to similar amounts of annual precipitation in the rain shadows of the large tropical shield volcanoes such as those in Hawaii. Lacking an explanation for this contrast, a two decade-long laboratory experiment tested importa...

The influence of biological soil crusts (BSCs) on the small-scale spatial distribution of inorganic nitrogen (N) in drylands is largely unknown, despite their known impact and importance on the N cycle in these environments. We evaluated how perennial plants and BSCs affected small-scale spatial patterns of soil inorganic N (ammonium and nitrate) availability in a semiarid grassland from Spain....

Research on ecosystem and societal response to global environmental change typically considers the effects of shifts in mean climate conditions. There is, however, some evidence of ongoing changes also in the variance of hydrologic and climate fluctuations. A relatively high interannual variability is a distinctive feature of the hydrologic regime of dryland regions, particularly at the desert ...

With rapid innovations in drone, camera, and 3D photogrammetry, drone-based remote sensing can accurately efficiently provide ultra-high resolution imagery digital surface model (DSM) at a landscape scale. Several studies have been conducted using to quantitatively assess the impacts of wind erosion on vegetation communities landforms drylands. In this study, first, five difficulties conducting...

This research aimed to estimate the splash erosion and its evolution during first months in specific land uses after a forest fire. The study area was located Congosto (North-West Spain), margins of Spanish drylands, wildfire occurred May 2012, which burned 15.56 ha scrubland Pinus reforestation. Two different were selected compared control areas: i) pine forest; and, scrublands. Rainfall inten...