Showing papers in "Journal of Arid Environments in 2003"

TL;DR: The Okavango Delta is one of Botswana's leading tourist destination areas, mainly because of the rich wildlife resources it sustains and its scenic beauty as mentioned in this paper. But despite its positive socioeconomic impacts, the industry is beginning to have negative environmental impacts in the area such as the destruction of the area's ecology through driving outside the prescribed trails, noise pollution and poor waste management.

TL;DR: In this article, an analysis of soil, vegetation types as well as structure and species distribution in 19 sites in El-Qaa plain along the Gulf of Suez (south Sinai, Egypt), and focuses on the environmental factors that control the species distribution.

TL;DR: Haloxylon ammodendron is an important economic plant used for sand fixation, pasture and fuel and its seed viability of about 10 months can be extended by cold or ultra dry storage at seed moisture content below 5%.

TL;DR: In this paper, a portable wind tunnel was used to test the contribution of biological and physical elements to overall soil aggregation on a soil dominated by biological soil crusts in south-eastern Australia.

TL;DR: Sporobolus ioclados (Nees ex Trin.) Nees (Poaceae), a halophytic grass distributed in coastal and inland regions of Pakistan, is a potential forage crop and if the seed is protected from salinity and temperature stress during storage in the soil, it could germinate during monsoon rains.

TL;DR: It is suggested that allelopathy may be a possible mechanism controlling the timing of chenopod germination and seedling establishment in the arid and semi-arid zones of Western Australia.

TL;DR: Changes in oasis environments in modern times are mainly influenced by human activities in the Tarim Basin, where population growth and improvement of socio-economic conditions lead to the rapid expansion of cultivated land with reclamation and evident shrinkage of native vegetation.

TL;DR: In this paper, a spatially explicit database of climate, land cover and soil texture was compiled for a 262,000 km(2) region in semi-arid Sudan, which is characterized by low input cultivation of millet, sorghum and sesame combined with livestock grazing.

TL;DR: Broad area control of foxes and dingoes in the Gibson Desert using 40–60 g dried meat baits impregnated with the poison sodium monofluoroacetate and delivered by aircraft at a density of 5 baits km −2 proved to be highly effective, but feral cats appeared to increase in abundance.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors proposed new legal and institutional regulations, which integrate environmental concerns and agricultural policies, for sustainable agricultural land use, which must be defined in terms of multiple use of agricultural land and strict conservation of prime agricultural land.

TL;DR: Results about viability and seed bank suggest a different behaviour because of ecological connotations, which is highly influenced by the life cycle of each species.

TL;DR: It is demonstrated that larger shaded leaves are an exception on south-facing slopes, and Gall formers usually prefer and perform better on large plant organs (leaves), in accordance with the plant vigour hypothesis.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors focused on regional perspectives on agriculture and biodiversity by exploring the situation in Northern Africa, the West African Sahel, East Africa and the Horn, and Southern Africa, and established that agriculture accelerates loss of biodiversity because of attempts by farmers to increase crop and animal production to feed the increasing population and contribute to the growth of the national economies.

TL;DR: Overall screening results revealed the characterization of four Streptomyces isolates (I7, AC32, Bb36 and Z11) which inhibited the growth of all tested pathogens and underlined their potential as a source of novel antibiotics.

TL;DR: In this paper, the changes of various landscape metrics were analyzed using the landscape structure analysis program FRAGSTATS, and the transition matrix of landscape patch types was calculated with the help of the GIS software IDRISI.

TL;DR: The spore density was not clearly affected neither by the host plants nor by the location, which suggest the absence of location or plant specificity for the AMF observed in soils of North Jordan, and biotic factors may be relatively less important than abiotic factors for establishing population patterns.

TL;DR: The distribution and quality of soil and land resources in heterogeneous grazing lands of central Australia were changed by grazing as mentioned in this paper, and degradation was a systematic decline in regulation of scarce resources, which had implications for potential productivity.

TL;DR: In this article, the relationship between suspended sediment concentration and water discharge during flash floods in an ephemeral stream of the northern Negev is analyzed, which indicates that changes in sediment supply and variations in the importance of source areas are also significant in this semi-arid water catchment.

TL;DR: New field evidence from the Kalahari revealed that both plant types invest the bulk of their roots in the surface horizons, suggesting that water is the limiting factor and grasses are superior competitors for water in the upper soil, while trees have exclusive access at deeper layers.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated whether rotational grazing allows reduction of, and recovery from, degradation caused by patch-selective grazing in large (1800-2100 ha) paddocks by providing adequate rest between grazing events.

TL;DR: Overall, the results of this study suggest that relatively large changes in precipitation produce comparatively small changes in rates of decay of both leaf and root litter.

TL;DR: Using data from three field surveys along a precipitation gradient of temperate grasslands in north-east China and south-east Mongolia, the spatial distribution of six plant functional types (PFTs): C 3 species, C 4 species, grasses, shrubs, forbs and succulents and their relationships with climate were analyzed as discussed by the authors.

TL;DR: The use of indigenous trees in the Negev landscape avoids the introduction of foreign species which have had, and may have, detrimental effects on the local ecology, which may alter landscape character and diminish landscape quality in areas that are sensitive to change as mentioned in this paper.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors used ten high-resolution aerial and satellite images taken from 1936 to 1996 to track the population dynamics and spatial pattern of all P. glandulosa greater than 2 m in diameter on a 75 ha area in southern New Mexico.

TL;DR: The environmental requirements for breaking seed dormancy for S. queretaroensis are finely tuned to those typical of the rainy season in its native habitat.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors used literature reviews, fieldwork and modelling to assess the likelihood that Kazakhstan's rangelands were overgrazed in Soviet times, and concluded that the extent of degradation of the pastures in their case study areas was probably lower than suggested in the literature, but that seasonal stock movement was essential to avoid degradation.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors assess the contribution of the major soil/sediment surfaces in the Southern Aral Sea Basin to the dust generation potential of this region using Lubbock Dust Generation, Analysis and Sampling System (LDGASS).

TL;DR: In this article, the historical normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) data were extracted from the FAO ARTEMIS and NASA PAL archives, and processed to stratify the major vegetation zones of Jordan.

TL;DR: The influence of fire on soil characteristics (soil-water content, soil compaction, soil temperature, infiltration ability, soil properties especially organic matter, pH, exchangeable Ca, Mg, K, Na and extractable P) of a semi-arid rangeland was quantified over two growing seasons (2000/01-2001/02) following an accidental fire.