A UC Riverside-led study in the Mojave Desert, Calif., has found that soils under “desert pavement” have an unusually high concentration of nitrate, a type of salt, close to the surface.
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More than 2,000 delegates from around the world have gathered in the Spanish capital to discuss ways to stop desertification, or the process that turns arable land into unusable desert.
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The African origin of early modern humans 200,000–150,000 years ago is now well documented, with archaeological data suggesting that a major migration from tropical east Africa to the Levant took place between 130,000 and 100,000 years ago via the presently hyper-arid Saharan-Arabian desert.
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It's not a good idea to put all your eggs in one basket… unless you're a senita moth. Found in the parched Sonoran desert of southern Arizona and northern Mexico, the senita moth depends on a single plant species - the senita cactus - both for its food and for a place to lay eggs.
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Background noise from the earth can provide a wealth of information about the earth's crust, which for example can then be used when searching for new oil fields. Researchers from TU Delft have tested this relatively new discovery in a desert in the Middle East. The seismic noise measurements have shown that the theory also works in practice. An article by PhD candidate Deyan Draganov about this research subject has been published in Geophysical Research Letters.
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Researchers from University of Bergen have found that trees, which are a main resource for desert people and their flocks, are in significant decline in the hyper-arid Eastern Desert of Egypt.
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