Imagine a sea of sand dunes the size of a European country, a world in motion, exquisite ridge lines perfectly sculpted by the winds and stretching to a layered horizon. Or a remote mountain massif in black rock or sandstone, hewn by the elements and marked in red ochre with the passage of ancient rock artists. Or a salt pan shimmering to a seemingly endless horizon. Welcome to the world's deserts, a realm of astonishing and dramatic beauty, as much places of the soul and the imagination as actual physical terrain.

Deserts are highly emblematic spaces: dry, barren, isolated. In literary and cinematic representations, they often betoken collapse and dystopia. Reading Aridity in Western American Literature offer readings of literature set in the US Southwest from ecocritical and new materialist perspectives. The volume explores the diverse epistemologies, histories, relationships, futures, and possibilities that emerge from the representation of American deserts in fiction, film, and literary art. The authors, as well, trace the social, cultural, economic, and biotic narratives that foreground deserts, and how these underscore the challenges of climate change, ecojustice, and human and non-human flourishing. As such, the volume rethinks what deserts are and provides a constructive lens for seeing deserts as more than blank spaces, rather as ecogeographies that challenge, critique, and urge collective ecojustice action.

The countries that make up the MENA region display wide diversity. One of the poorest countries in the world sits alongside two of the wealthiest, whilst the region's natural resources range from immeasurable oil and gas reserves to some of the scantiest natural endowments anywhere in the world. Yet through this diversity runs a common thread: water scarcity. Now, through the impact of human development and climate change, the water resource itself is changing,bringing new risks and increasing the vulnerability of all those dependent on water. Chris Ward and Sandra Ruckstuhl assess the increased challenges now facing the countries of the region, placing particular emphasis on water scarcity and the resultant risks to livelihoods, food security and the environment. They evaluate the risks and reality of climate change in the region, and offer an assessment of the vulnerability of agriculture and livelihoods. In a final section, they explore the options for responding to the new challenges, including policy, institutional, economic and technical measures.

Along a tiny spring in a narrow canyon near Death Valley, seemingly against all odds, an Inyo Mountain slender salamander makes its home. "The desert," writes conservation biologist Christopher Norment, "is defined by the absence of water, and yet in the desert there is water enough, if you live properly." Relicts of a Beautiful Sea explores the existence of rare, unexpected, and sublime desert creatures such as the black toad and four pupfishes unique to the desert West. All are anomalies: amphibians and fish, dependent upon aquatic habitats, yet living in one of the driest places on earth, where precipitation averages less than four inches per year. In this climate of extremes, beset by conflicts over water rights, each species illustrates the work of natural selection and the importance of conservation. This is also a story of persistence - for as much as ten million years - amid the changing landscape of western North America. By telling the story of these creatures, Norment illustrates the beauty of evolution and explores ethical and practical issues of conservation: what is a four-inch-long salamander worth, hidden away in the heat-blasted canyons of the Inyo Mountains, and what would the cost of its extinction be? What is any lonely and besieged species worth, and why should we care?

The modern southwestern cities of Phoenix, Tucson, Las Vegas, Albuquerque, and El Paso occupy lands that once supported rich desert ecosystems. Typical development activities often resulted in scraping these desert lands of an ancient living landscape, to be replaced with one that is human-made and dependent on a large consumption of energy and natural resources. Design with the Desert: Conservation and Sustainable Development explores the natural and built environment of the American Southwest and introduces development tools for shaping the future of the region in a more sustainable way. Explore the Desert Landscape and Ecology This transdisciplinary collaboration draws on insights from leading authorities in their fields, spanning science, ecology, planning, landscape development, architecture, and urban design. Organized into five parts, the book begins by introducing the physical aspects of the desert realm: the land, geology, water, and climate. The second part deals with the "living" and ecological aspects, from plants and animals to ecosystems. The third part, on planning in the desert, covers the ecological and social issues surrounding water, natural resource planning, and community development. Bring the Desert into the City The fourth part looks at how to bring nature into the built environment through the use of native plants, the creation of habitats for nature in urban settings, and the design of buildings, communities, and projects that create life. The final part of the book focuses on urban sustainability and how to design urban systems that provide a secure future for community development. Topics include water security, sustainable building practices, and bold architecture and community designs. Design Solutions That Work with the Local Environment This book will inspire discussion and contemplation for anyone interested in desert development, from developers and environmentalists to planners, community leaders, and those who live in desert regions. Throughout this volume, the contributors present solutions to help promote ecological balance between nature and the built environment in the American Southwest-and offer valuable insights for other ecologically fragile regions around the world.

Writer-poet William L. Fox has spent much of his career contemplating the complex ways that landscape, human cognition, and history collide to create our perceptions and treatment of place. In Playa Works, Fox considers the West's emptiest spaces -- the playas, or dry beds, of the ancient lakes that once filled much of the Great Basin. Among the flattest, most barren places on the planet, the West's playas have haunted the American imagination since the Fremont expedition first surveyed them in the early nineteenth century.

In these eight brilliant essays, Fox explores many of the major playas of the American West, examining locations as diverse as Nellis Air Force Base and Frenchman Flat, where the federal government has tested experimental aircraft and atomic weaponry; the Great Salt Lake Desert, where landspeed records have been broken; and the Black Rock Desert of Northern Nevada, site of the colorful Burning Man arts festival. He analyzes the geological and climatological conditions that created the playas and the historical role that playas played in the exploration and settlement of the West. And he offers lucid and keenly perceptive discussions of the ways that artists have responded to the playas, from the ancient makers of geoglyphs to the work of contemporary artists who have found inspiration in these enigmatic spaces, including earthworks builder Michael Heizer, photographer Richard Misrach, and painter Michael Moore. The ensemble is a compelling combination of natural history, philosophy, and art criticism, a thoughtful meditation on humankind's aversion to and fascination with the void.

In Playa Works, Fox's passion for the American West combines with his scholar'scuriosity and power of analysis to produce one of the most engaging discussions yet of the natural phenomena that we call playas. This is nature writing at its best -- provocative, profound, richly intelligent, and delightfully adventurous.

A land of austerity and bounty, the Sonoran Desert is a place that captures imaginations and hearts. It is a place where barbs snag, thorns prick, and claws scratch. A place where lizards scramble and it's a book to walk with, a book to scribble in, and even a book to use as a cushion if the desert rock you tried to sit on was too sharp. A place where lizards scramble and pause, hawks hunt like wolves, and bobcats skulk in creosote. Both literary anthology and hands-on field guide, The Sonoran Desert is a groundbreaking book that melds art and science. It captures the stunning biodiversity of the world's most verdant desert through words and images. More than fifty poets and writers-including Christopher Cokinos, Alison Hawthorne Deming, Ken Lamberton, Eric Magrane, Jane Miller, Gary Paul Nabhan, Alberto Rios, Ofelia Zepeda, and many others-have composed responses to key species of this striking desert. Each creative contribution is joined by an illustration by award-winning artist Paul Mirocha and scientific information about the creature or plant authored by the book's editors. From the saguaro to the mountain lion, from the black-tailed jackrabbit to the mesquite, the species represented here have evoked compelling and creative responses from each contributor. Just as writers such as Edward Abbey and Ellen Meloy have memorialized the desert, this collection is sure to become a new classic, offering up the next generation of voices of this special and beautiful place, the Sonoran Desert.

Take an unforgettable sky excursion over Big Bend with photographer Paul Chaplo as he captures the shapes, textures, and colors of the craggy, weathered landforms people usually see only from the ground--and some places no photographer has gone before. Flying from Marfa, and hanging precariously from the open door of an aircraft, Chaplo shares a hawk's eye view of a fiercely beautiful region, revealing the stark and magnificent landscapes carved by the force of eons of wind and water on the arid, mountainous country along the Rio Grande.

Perfect for the budding paleontologist, this book brings to life animals that lived long ago. With clear text and engaging questions, a full range of fossils from microscopic insects to gigantic prehistoric mammals is examined. Students are encouraged to discuss the idea of "living fossils" and examine how fossilized animals have adapted into life forms still present today.

The first comprehensive study of the park, past and present, "Death Valley National Park" probes the environmental and human history of this most astonishing desert. Established as a national monument in 1933, Death Valley was an anomaly within the national park system. Though many who knew this landscape were convinced that its stark beauty should be preserved, to do so required a reconceptualization of what a park consists of, grassroots and national support for its creation, and a long and difficult political struggle to secure congressional sanction.
This history begins with a discussion of the physical setting, its geography and geology, and descriptions of the Timbisha, the first peoples to inhabit this tough and dangerous landscape. In the 19th-century and early 20th century, new arrivals came to exploit the mineral resources in the region and develop permanent agricultural and resort settlements. Although Death Valley was established as a National Monument in 1933, fear of the harsh desert precluded widespread acceptance by both the visiting public and its own administrative agency. As a result, Death Valley lacked both support and resources. This volume details the many debates over the park's size, conflicts between miners, farmers, the military, and wilderness advocates, the treatment of the Timbisha, and the impact of tourists on its cultural and natural resources.
In time, Death Valley came to be seen as one of the great natural wonders of the United States, and was elevated to full national park status in 1994. The history of Death Valley National Park embodies the many tensions confronting American environmentalism.

There are many urgent problems in arid land hydrogeology and it is these issues which are tackled in this volume on desert environments. The UAE-Japan symposia provide a venue for the exchange of expertise, confronting such problems as purification, usage and management of groundwater, the assessment and protection of sustainable water resources, and soil enhancement techniques for moisture control in arid lands. The hope is that a better understanding of dryland environment, combined with innovative solutions and technologies, will contribute to the greening of desert lands.

This is the first international volume in the Long Term Ecological Research Network series. The book summarizes the state of knowledge about biodiversity in drylands, and seek to identify questions and strategies for future research and to lay out guidelines for management of biodiversity in desert and semidesert regions. The continuing sensitivity of drylands to desertification, the fact that they occupy 40% of the world's terrestrial area, and the increasing human populations in these regions, make the understanding of their biodiversity and its changes over time of central importance. Drylands also provide a natural laboratory to address general questions about biodiversity, ecological succession, etc., because the relative spareness of the landscape allows one to isolate all the variables more effectively than can be done in biologically "richer" terrains. This book brings together leading workers, primarily from the U.S. and Israel, with some European scientists, to develop an integrative synthesis of perspectives on biodiversity in drylands, considering work from multiple regions and investigations focussing on multiple levels of ecological analysis. Each chapter was written by a small team of investigators from different institutions and having experience in different systems. Each chapter team combines at least two ecological perspectives, for instance, population and ecosystem, or species and landscape.

"The Changing Mile, " originally published in 1965, was a benchmark in ecological studies, demonstrating the prevalence of change in a seemingly changeless place. Photographs made throughout the Sonoran Desert region in the late 1800s and early 1900s were juxtaposed with photographs of the same locations taken many decades later. The nearly one hundred pairs of images revealed that climate has played a strong role in initiating many changes in the region. This new book updates the classic by adding recent photographs to the original pairs, providing another three decades of data and showing even more clearly the extent of change across the landscape. During these same three decades, abundant information about climatic variability, land use, and plant ecology has accumulated, making it possible to determine causes of change with more confidence. Using nearly two hundred additional triplicate sets of unpublished photographs, "The Changing Mile Revisited" utilizes repeat photographs selected from almost three hundred stations located in southern Arizona, in the Pinacate region of Mexico, and along the coast of the Gulf of California. Coarse photogrammetric analysis of this enlarged photographic set shows the varied response of the region's major plant species to the forces of change. The images show vegetation across the entire region at sites ranging in elevation from sea level to a mile above sea level. Some sites are truly arid, while others are located above the desert in grassland and woodland. Common names are used for most plants and animals (with Latin equivalents in endnotes) to make the book more accessible to non-technical readers. The original "Changing Mile" was based upon a unique set of data that allowed the authors to evaluate the extent and magnitude of vegetation change in a large geographic region. By extending the original landmark study, "The Changing Mile Revisited" will remain an indispensable reference for all concerned with the fragile desert environment.

These papers are classified into two parts. The first section deals with geotechnical engineering, covering topics such as the properties of soils and rocks, while the second concentrates on geoenvironmental issues, such as land filling and soil pollution.

Desertification is land degradation in arid and semi-arid regions from both climatic and anthropogenic causes. The Northern Mediterranean with its irregular rainfall, poor soils, abandonment of traditional agriculture and unsustainable water exploitation has been recognised as a region with increasing desertification problems.

The MEDALUS project was set up to improve the scientific basis for understanding and managing semi-arid environments that are undergoing great change. The material presented includes the results of interdisciplinary in-depth investigations undertaken over the last 10 years. It will provide a unique collection of research results that will assist rural planners, and regional and national authorities in preparing plans for mitigation. Includes:

• Field based research carried out in the MEDALUS project

• Authors with first hand research experience of their material

• Results of direct applicability to land use management in Mediterranean environments

• Detailed thematic and spatially-based analyses

• Original material based on specific case studies

Of particular interest to geographers, ecologists, agronomists, rural planners, and all authorities on desertification problems in Mediterranean environments, from both scientific and land use management perspectives. A practical contribution to undergraduate and postgraduate university courses on the Mediterranean environment, and a useful reference source for secondary education.

The papers in this volume cover topics in the field of geoengineering in arid lands. Topics include: coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical processes in geomechanics; sediment formation in marine environment; soil stability and stabilization techniques; and unsaturated soil behaviour and modelling.

Riparian ecosystems are declining throughout the southwestern United States, where many have disappeared completely; yet progress toward checking their decline has been marginal, and the results of only a few recovery projects have been evaluated. In this guidebook, Mark K. Briggs has filled this gap in riparian conservation literature. Based on his experiences gleaned from evaluating the results of many riparian rehabilitation projects, Briggs presents these results in a manner that biologists, hydrologists, government planners, resource managers, and other concerned citizens can immediately apply toward developing site-specific recovery strategies. The book opens with a review of watershed characteristics and an examination of drainage systems, then proceeds to determining the causes of riparian decline. It introduces five factors that have a significant effect on the results of riparian rehabilitation--natural regeneration, water availability, channel stability, direct impacts such as livestock grazing and recreational activities, and soil salinity--and offers case studies that demonstrate how revegetation has been used both effectively and ineffectively. It also discusses strategies other than revegetation that may be effective in improving the ecological condition of a site. Many of the strategies presented are also relevant to nonarid climates and to urban areas. By emphasizing evaluation of riparian ecosystems, so that the causes of degradation can be understood, and by offering general approaches that can be tailored to specific situations, Riparian Ecosystem Recovery in Arid Lands takes a holistic approach to riparian recovery that will enable users to better judge whether recovery expenditures are likely to produce desired results. An unprecedented work, it will substantially add to efforts across the Southwest and elsewhere to restore these unique and priceless ecosystems. CONTENTS 1 An Overview: Background on Riparian Ecosystems / Lessons Learned from Past Riparian Recovery Efforts / An Evaluation Strategy / Defining Some Important Terms 2 Considering the Damaged Riparian Area from a Watershed Perspective: Case Study 1: Rincon Creek / Taking Advantage of Available Information / Getting to Know the Watershed / Getting to Know the Stream 3 Impacts within the Riparian Zone: Livestock / Case Study 2: Sheepshead Spring / Recreation / Competition from Nonnative Species / Wildlife 4 Natural Recovery in Riparian Ecosystems: Case Study 3: Aravaipa Creek / Factors Influencing Natural Recovery / Case Study 4: McEuen Seep / Autoecology of Selected Southwestern Riparian Tree Species / Case Study 5: Boulder Creek 5 Water Availability: Case Study 6: Box Bar / How Groundwater Decline Occurs / Evaluating Groundwater Conditions / Revegetating Riparian Ecosystems Characterized by Groundwater Decline 6 The Drainageway: Channel Instability and Riparian Ecosystems / Case Study 7: Babocomari River / Channel Dynamics / Strategies for Evaluating Channel Stability / Developing Recovery Projects along Unstable Alluvial Stream Channels 7 Soil Salinity and Riparian Ecosystems: Effects of Soil Salinity on Plant Growth / The Soil Survey / Soil Salinity and Revegetation 8 Developing the Recovery Plan: Developing Project Objectives / Selecting the Best Site / Local, State, and Federal Permit Requirements / Identifying Model Areas / Critical Components of the Recovery Plan / Community Involvement / Demonstration Sites / Postproject Evaluation and Monitoring

The Integrated Urban Water Management (IUWM) is an emerging approach to managing the entire urban water cycle in an integrated way, which is key to achieving the sustainability of urban water resources and services. The IUWM incorporates: the systematic consideration of the various dimensions of water, including surface and groundwater resources, quality and quantity issues; the implication that while water is a system it is also a component which interacts with other systems; and the interrelationships between water and social and economic development.

Integrated Urban Water Management: Arid and Semi-Arid Regions the outcome of UNESCO s International Hydrological Programme project on the topic examines the integrated management of water resources in urban settings, focusing on issues specific to arid and semi-arid regions and on what make them different from other regions. The urban water management system is considered herein as two integrated major entities; water supply management and water excess management. The first six chapters provide an overview of the various aspects of IUWM in arid and semi-arid regions, with emphasis on water supply technologies, such as artificial recharge, water transfers, desalination, and harvesting of rainfall. Water excess management is examined in the context of both the stormwater management system and the floodplain management system. Case studies from developed and developing countries are presented in order to emphasize the various needs and challenges of water management in urban environments in arid and semi-arid regions around the world.

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