Showing papers in "Journal of Arid Environments in 2006"

TL;DR: The evolution of aridity in Australia can be traced back to times when the arid zone was humid and supported rainforest as discussed by the authors, but it was still wetter than today.

TL;DR: In this article, the evolution of Southern South America (SSA) through Cenozoic, emphasizing the relationships between biomes and the geological forces that, through different climatic-environmental factors, have driven its evolution.

TL;DR: In the absence of fog, dew formation and direct water vapor adsorption are two mechanisms by which water can be added to the soil in arid zones as mentioned in this paper, however, since plants cover only a small fraction of the desert surface, such assessments apply only to a small proportion of the area.

TL;DR: A 150-year chronological study of semi-arid abandoned farmland in the central Loess Plateau of China indicated that soil physical properties were closely related to the date of being abandoned and the vegetation recovery stages as discussed by the authors.

TL;DR: In this paper, a review of the control on aeolian processes and their consequences at plant-interspace, patch-landscape, and regional-global scales is presented.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors seasonally measured diurnal fixation rates in different biological soil crusts and found that later successional crusts typically had greater P n, averaging 1.2-1.3fold higher daily C fixation in Canyonlands and 2.4-2.8-fold higher in the Jornada.

TL;DR: Faunal evidence of the Turkana Basin of Kenya corroborates conclusions derived from other lines of evidence, but raises new questions as discussed by the authors, as it is not all parts of this basin responded in the same way to climate change.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined the spatial heterogeneity and temporal dynamics of the Northeast Region of Brazil (NEB) using a 20-year time series of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) observations, derived from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)-Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) instrument.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors found that the most dramatic changes have occurred in middle elevation shrublands dominated by creosotebush (Larrea tridentata), Joshua tree (Yucca brevifolia), and/or blackbrush (Coleogyne ramossissima), where most of the fires occurred between 1980 and 2004.

TL;DR: This paper develops a five-step approach for analysis of historical relationships among areas of endemism using a set of 22 clades drawn from the warm deserts biota of western North America, and demonstrates the reciprocal strengths (and weaknesses) of phylogeography and phylogenetic biogeography.

TL;DR: The SPRING treatment resulted in more bare-ground and lower plant productivity compared to other shelter treatments, contrasting with the initial hypothesis that shallower-rooted grasses would gain a competitive advantage over shrubs if precipitation was shifted from winter to spring.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors explored the possibilities of semi-arid ecosystems to sequester carbon by means of rangeland exclusion and afforestation with Pinus ponderosa in NW Patagonia (Argentina).

TL;DR: In this article, a greenhouse experiment was conducted to assess the effect of salt stress on growth, seed yield, and seed oil concentration in a traditional medicinal plant ajwain (Trachyspermum ammi L.).

TL;DR: In this paper, a combined spectral response index (COSRI) was calculated for bare soils and vegetation by adjusting the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), which was determined in surface soil samples.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors demonstrate that precipitation fluctuations affected populations of perennial vegetation, annuals, and small herbivores in the Mojave Desert ecosystem, including creosote bushes and chenopods.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors employed a 108-year precipitation historical data record, global climate observing network observations and satellite data to identify possible anomalies in rainfall in and around two major arid urban areas, Phoenix, Arizona and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors monitor modern dust accumulation in the arid southwestern United States to determine the rate and composition of dust inputs to soils and relate dust accumulation to weather patterns to help predict the effects of climate change on dust production and accumulation.

TL;DR: In this paper, a field study was conducted in the Guinan desertified grassland of the Qinghai-Tibet plateau, North-west China, to test the hypotheses on a regional scale.

TL;DR: Washing and chilling for a period of 14 days was most effective in breaking dormancy in F. gummosa and T. polium and germination rate was positively correlated with germination percentage.

TL;DR: In this article, the energy balance of the Elqui valley is investigated to compare the evapo-transpiration of the cultivated area with the one of the natural vegetation and to estimate the dew deposition, which proves to be an important water resource in arid areas.

TL;DR: Among Cactaceae, Opuntia is the most diverse and widely distributed genus in the Americas and is strongly associated with bee pollination and coevolution with at least two bee genera.

TL;DR: In this paper, an analysis of the recent landcover dynamics through the integration of remote sensing and GIS could provide base information for documenting salinity change trends and for anticipating further degradation where the absence of long-term salinity records is an obstacle.

TL;DR: In this paper, a 17-year record of fixed-point photographs of six elephant herds in Etosha National Park, Namibia was used to study the relationship between animals, plants and water.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined the relationship between plant species diversity and ground-water level in the lower reaches of the Tarim River, western China, by analyzing the field data from 40 monitoring wells across nine study sites and 18 vegetation survey plots during the period from 2000 to 2002.

TL;DR: In this paper, the dynamics and the controlling factors of soil respiration measured with a closed static chamber method for continuous 2 years in grazed and ungrazed typical Leymus chinensis steppes, Inner Mongolia, PR China were analyzed.

TL;DR: The usefulness of an integrated methodology involving a hand-held electromagnetic sensor (Geonics-EM38) and the ESAP software and the multiple linear regression (MLR) calibration model for assessing, predicting, and mapping soil salinity is shown.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors illustrate the importance of variation in water availability to temporal variation in vegetation dynamics in arid and semi-arid ecosystems, and hypothesize that fine-scale pulses of precipitation interact with longer scale variation in climate and weather to generate temporal variations in plant community composition.

TL;DR: An integrated framework for organizing, synthesizing, and applying the authors' growing understanding of aridland ecosystems using a flexible, multi-objective assessment, monitoring, and management approach is described.

TL;DR: Wang et al. as mentioned in this paper used a full year 2000 (1 January 2000-31 December 2000) time-series of SPOT VEGETATION images with 1-km spatial resolution to produce a land cover map with special emphasis on the detection of sparse vegetation as an indicator of areas at risk of desertification.

TL;DR: In this article, reference evapo-transpiration ET o was estimated using Penman-Monteith equation, under full data and limited data availability conditions, and Hargraves method.