Semiarid Lands And Deserts

A compendium of current information on arid soils. Provides a comprehensive background of the various soils and biota of arid regions, as well as a detailed account of the current understanding of degradation processes, and includes methodologies for arid land maintenance and rehabilitation and for

This book deals with arid and semi-arid environments and their classification, and the physiological restraints and adaptations of plants to the environment. Further, it discusses economic botany and the needs and methods of conserving economic plants. A broad view is taken regarding the definition of economic plants, taking into account their value to the environment as well as to man and to livestock. The individual deserts and associated semi-arid regions are described in separate chapters, providing background information on the regional environments in terms of climate and major plant formations. The economic plants within these formations, their usages, geographical distribution together with their morphological and physiological adaptations are treated in detail.

Changing desert areas for land use implies a lot of ecological problems. These and related ones are dealt with in this book covering various interdisciplinary and international aspects. Large areas in arid and semi-arid regions are already polluted in various ways. One of the biggest problems is the anthropogenic salinization by inadequate means of agriculture and irrigation. Additionally, most arid areas in the world are dramatically overgrazed. Methods and practices of a sustainable land use in deserts are urgently needed in many arid regions. This book gives a broad survey on some of the affected regions of the world as well as some case studies from elsewhere (Aral Sea, Negev desert, Namib desert etc.). Thus, basic and applied sciences are brought together. Water management in deserts, grazing systems or reclamation of desertified areas are among the topics of this book, as well as social and economic aspects.

The chapters in this section place the problems of vegetation and climate interactions in semi-arid regions into the context which recur throughout the book. First, Verstraete and Schwartz review desertification as a process of global change evaluating both the human and climatic factors. The theme of human impact and land management is discussed further by Roberts whose review focuses on semi-arid land-use planning. In the third and final chapter in this section we return to the meteorological theme. Nicholls reviews the effects of El Nino/Southern Oscillation on Australian vegetation stressing, in particular, the interaction between plants and their climatic environment. Vegetatio 91: 3-13, 1991. 3 A. Henderson-Sellers and A. J. Pitman (eds). Vegetation and climate interactions in semi-arid regions. © 1991 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Desertification and global change 2 M. M. Verstraete! & S. A. Schwartz ! Institute for Remote Sensing Applications, CEC Joint Research Centre, Ispra Establishment, TP 440, 1-21020 Ispra (Varese), Italy; 2 Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI48109-2143, USA Accepted 24. 8. 1990 Abstract Arid and semiarid regions cover one third of the continental areas on Earth. These regions are very sensitive to a variety of physical, chemical and biological degradation processes collectively called desertification.

This is the second part of a two-volume work which presents an authoritative world-wide view of our knowledge about, and understanding of, hot-desert ecosystems. This includes some semi-arid and arid areas, as well as deserts in the strict sense. The hot deserts are distinguished from the temperate deserts (which form the subject of another volume in the series) by the virtual absence of snowfall, even though frosts may occur. For each major hot-desert region, expert authors have summarized existing knowledge according to a general outline. This includes descriptions of the ecosystem components (climate, soil, flora and fauna), and discussion of interaction between components and overall ecosystem functioning. The information from the regional chapters has been integrated into a world-wide view in the ''synthesis'' chapters. Because of its length, the volume is published in two parts. The first part included the general synthesis chapters, and regional descriptions of the hot deserts of America and Australia. The present volume covers hot deserts of Asia and Africa.