Showing papers in "Journal of Arid Environments in 2018"

TL;DR: In this paper, the degradation of natural vegetation in the savannah of Burkina Faso was assessed by combining NDVI trends and fractional Land Use/Cover Change (LULCC).

TL;DR: In this article, a review of the literature on the vulnerability of rural women in developing countries to climate change is presented, with a focus on women being pro-active in adapting to the climate change on the one hand and being proactive in adapting on the other.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors quantified the direct effect of biocusts on soil water regulation, erosion control and climate and air quality in two different semiarid ecosystems dominated by biocrusts, and explored the social importance and perceived vulnerability regarding the capacity of these ecosystems to provide services to society.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors performed groundwater prospecting in the northern UAE and Oman by delineating Groundwater Potential (GWP), the relative likelihood of a location to accumulate groundwater, by modelling the influence of physiographic variables affecting groundwater accumulation.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors conducted a focus group discussion with smallholder farmers in the semi-arid Lower Gweru Communal area of Central Zimbabwe to sensitize them on climate change and to establish their perceptions of the projected climate of Zimbabwe by 2050.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors present methods to prioritise locations for degradation mitigation investments based on stakeholder preferences for ecosystem services, and assess the supply of the stakeholder-selected ecosystem services and land degradation risk using GIS-based spatial models.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated the 30-year changes in all lakes larger than 1 km2 in Northwestern China and the associated driving forces, and found that the number of lakes increased from 121 to 135, and the total lake area increased from 5495 km2 to 6445 km2.

TL;DR: In this article, a set of general aboveground biomass models for exclosures in the drylands of the Tigray region, northern Ethiopia were developed from a large dataset with 305 destructively sampled trees and shrubs covering 50 different species and distinct growing conditions.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors report on the findings of a research study into GALS in Malawi where the National Smallholder Farmers Association of Malawi (NASFAM) has been implementing GALS since 2013 with 4274 farmers (2821 women and 1453 men to May 2016).

TL;DR: In this article, the authors studied the dietary pattern of red fox in the cold desert of the Trans-Himalayas in India, where natural resources are limited, and found that human subsidies contribute substantially (maximum 55.87%) to red fox diet.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors assess the assimilation of invasive plant species into the lives of households in several small farming settlements in the arid Kalahari region of the Northern Cape, South Africa.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors compared 11 biotic variables related to soil and microbial functions under shrubs against paired-adjacent grassland, and concluded that shrubs can enhance ecosystem functions, and maintain important ecological processes through concomitant changes in soil physico-chemical properties.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated the role of woody vegetation in the decline of migratory birds feeding in trees, ground vegetation and ground-feeding birds searching for food on the ground.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors measured riparian vegetation composition along the Colorado River through Grand Canyon, determined which factors best explain observed changes, identified how richness and functional diversity vary, and described the implications of their results for river management.

TL;DR: In this paper, the influence of increasing anthropogenic pressure on land degradation in highly vulnerable semiarid environments in the Mediterranean region was investigated, which indicated a clear trend of land degradation, and that the most important features were the transformation of forest to shrubland, the conversion of shrub land to grassland, and the degradation of grassland to bare land, the last stage of degradation.

TL;DR: In this article, the economic value of dry land ecosystem services affected by the invasive tree Prosopis, which was originally introduced in Africa and elsewhere for providing firewood, animal fodder and other services to rural people, was assessed.

TL;DR: The findings indicate that remotely sensed albedo correlates to multifunctionality, which has been linked to alternative states in global drylands, which can inform us about the onset of desertification in these areas.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors used a remote sensing approach based on the growing season -October to March- normalized difference vegetation index from MODIS, and climatological datasets from 2003 to 2013 to estimate precipitation use efficiency, precipitation marginal response, and the temporal trends of the residuals from the normalized differences vegetation index -annual precipitation linear relationship and the ecosystem services provision index.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors conducted an in-depth analysis of ecosystem service studies conducted across Spanish arid and semi-arid ecosystems in order to identify achievements and failures of the ecosystem services application for decision making.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors describe wildlife and livestock interactions in response to pasture in one of the few remaining areas of mixed wildlife-livestock use with unrestricted movements, and provide evidence to support the notion that traditional pastoral systems which continue to manage for heterogeneity of pasture can still support not only livestock but also substantial numbers of wildlife.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors experimentally shaded water points on farmland in the Kalahari to assess the impact of artificial shading on species, visitation rates and visitation patterns of drinking birds.

TL;DR: In this paper, the seasonal variation of gatton panic productivity and quality in two sites with different annual rainfall was estimated, and the effects of tree shadow (guayacan, Caesalpinia paraguariensis) on gattonpanic above ground primary production (ANPP) were analyzed.

TL;DR: In this paper, the role of dune geometry, morphology and hydrological processes in relation to sediment grain-size distribution in the coppice dune system is analyzed, showing that fine-grained dune sediments are associated with the wind-driven accumulation of very fine sand and fine sand (50-250μm), irrespective of the height of the dunes.

TL;DR: In this paper, the density and morphologies of surface lithic scatters in the same region were re-examined, based on data previously published by Foley and Lahr (2015, PLoS ONE), which showed that many surface clasts previously interpreted as lithics are better interpreted as formed by in situ weathering and wind abrasion.

TL;DR: Leaf ITV followed the general trends of the leaf economic spectrum, with negative relationships of leaf mass per area with both photosynthetic rate and leaf nitrogen and mean annual temperature correlated negatively with leaf relative water content and positively with water use efficiency.

TL;DR: In this article, the role of shrub cover and UV-B on decomposition in a Sonoran Desert grassland was assessed, showing that higher decomposition of litter away from shrubs may reflect a combination of greater rates of thermal degradation and photodegradation.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors evaluated the ability of Landsat-derived spectral variables to characterize surface variability of vegetation cover and bare ground across a range of vegetation community types, and applied four regression models to characterize the spatial distribution of putative grassland ecological states across their study area.

TL;DR: Wang et al. as mentioned in this paper investigated the response of microbial and root respiration to N enrichment in a long-term fenced grassland on the Loess Plateau of China, and found that N enrichment may reduce the soil C loss through CO2 emissions.

TL;DR: It is concluded that female farmers constrained by: fencing, long dry spells and labour were incapacitated to effectively implement conservation agriculture hence failed to attain food security.