Desert News

December 19, 2024

Top Headlines

Pups of Powerful Meerkat Matriarchs Pay a Price for Their Mom's Status

Dec. 9, 2024 — In meerkat society a dominant female is in charge, growling, biting, pushing and shoving to keep others in line. The matriarch's bullying behavior is fueled by high levels of testosterone that can surge to twice those of her male counterparts when ...

Desert Ants Use the Polarity of the Geomagnetic Field for Navigation

Dec. 6, 2024 — Desert ants of the Cataglyphis nodus species use the Earth's magnetic field for spatial orientation, but rely on a different component of the field than other insects. The survey suggests that the ants also use a different mechanism for ...

Researchers Develop Crystals to Harvest Water from Air, Inspired by Desert Life

Nov. 19, 2024 — Researchers have developed a new crystalline material that can harvest water from fog without any energy input. The design of the novel type of smart crystals, which the researchers named Janus ...

Living Microbes Discovered in Earth's Driest Desert

Nov. 14, 2024 — A new technique allows researchers to separate external and internal DNA to identify microbes colonizing the hostile environment of the Atacama ...

Latest Headlines

updated 11:22pm EST

New Simultaneous Lithium and Magnesium Extraction Technology

Oct. 22, 2024 — In the race for solutions to unlock untapped sources, engineers have developed new technology enabling direct lithium extraction from extreme environments like the ...

Simulated Mission to Mars: Survey of Lichen Species

Oct. 11, 2024 — A collection-based survey of lichen species at the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah, USA and Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station in Nunavut, Canada was conducted as part of the Mars-160 ...

Arthropods Dominate Plant Litter Decomposition in Drylands

Oct. 15, 2024 — An analysis of leaf litter breakdown in climatically diverse habitats shows that decomposition by larger invertebrates dominates in hot, dry regions and warmer seasons. Researchers have shown that ...

Deserts' Biggest Threat? Flooding

Sep. 9, 2024 — A new study has found that the increase in soil erosion in coastal areas due to desertification is worsening flood impacts on Middle Eastern and North African port cities. The researchers focused ...

Study Finds Nearly Half of U.S. Counties Have at Least One 'Pharmacy Desert'

Aug. 23, 2024 — Nearly half of counties in the United States have at least one 'pharmacy desert' where there is no retail pharmacy within 10 miles, according to a ...

Groundwater Reserves in Southwestern Europe More Stable Overall Than Previously Thought

Aug. 6, 2024 — Groundwater is a vital resource, sustaining plants and ecosystems, ensuring agricultural production and serving as a core component of drinking water ...

Seismic Detectors Measure Soil Moisture Using Traffic Noise

Aug. 5, 2024 — Using state of the art techniques, researchers use vibrations from traffic to measure underground soil ...

Discovery of a Hybrid Lineage Offers Clues to How Trees Adapt to Climate Change

July 17, 2024 — The discovery of a hybrid population of poplar trees in western Wyoming has provided insight into how natural hybridization informs the evolution of ...

Local Dragonflies Expose Mercury Pollution Patterns

July 16, 2024 — A new study has unveiled surprising findings about mercury pollution: where it comes from and how it moves through the environment vary significantly depending on the ecosystem. In drier regions, ...

Engine Wear Risk as Planes Swallow More Dust Waiting to Land

July 8, 2024 — Planes flying into one of the world's busiest airports are ingesting around 10kg of dust per 1,000 ...

Droughts' Impact on Pasturelands Is Measured in Order to Guide Extensive Livestock Management on Spain's Dehesas

Oct. 30, 2024 — A study using meteorological data and remote sensors, aims to furnish livestock farmers with information to promote more efficient ...

Small, Adsorbent 'Fins' Collect Humidity Rather Than Swim Through Water

June 26, 2024 — Clean, safe water is a limited resource and access to it depends on local bodies of water. But even dry regions have some water vapor in the air. To harvest small amounts of humidity, researchers ...

Understanding the Green Sahara's Collapse

June 17, 2024 — Abrupt shifts within complex systems such as the Earth's climate system are extremely hard to predict. Researchers have now succeeded in developing a new method to anticipate such tipping points ...

Beach Erosion Will Make Southern California Coastal Living Five Times More Expensive by 2050, Study Predicts

May 22, 2024 — Southern California's iconic sandy coastlines are vanishing at an alarming rate, and it's a warning sign for coastal communities worldwide, new research ...

Airborne Technology Brings New Hope to Map Shallow Aquifers in Earth's Most Arid Deserts

May 16, 2024 — The new technique will map the top of the aquifer, called the 'water table,' spanning areas as large as hundreds of kilometers using a radar mounted on a high-altitude aircraft. According ...

Warming Arctic Reduces Dust Levels in Parts of the Planet

Apr. 25, 2024 — Dust can have a huge impact on local air quality, food security, energy supply and public health. Previous studies have found that dust levels are decreasing across India, particularly northern ...

World's Oases Threatened by Desertification, Even as Humans Expand Them

Apr. 22, 2024 — Oases are important habitats and water sources for dryland regions, sustaining 10% of the world's population despite taking up about 1.5% of land area. But in many places, climate change and ...

How Soil Microbes Survive in Harsh Desert Environments

Apr. 17, 2024 — Prolonged droughts followed by sudden bursts of rainfall -- how do desert soil bacteria manage to survive such harsh conditions? This long-debated question has now been answered by microbiologists. ...

Fairy Circles: Plant Water Stress Causes Namibia's Gaps in Grass

Mar. 19, 2024 — Namibia's legendary fairy circles are mysterious, circular, bald patches in the dry grasslands on the edge of the Namib Desert. Their formation has been researched for decades and has recently ...

Desert Ants: The Magnetic Field Calibrates the Navigation System

Feb. 13, 2024 — Desert ants find their way during an early learning phase with the help of the Earth's magnetic field. The associated learning process leaves clear traces in their nervous ...

Climate Change Isn't Producing Expected Increase in Atmospheric Moisture Over Dry Regions

Jan. 17, 2024 — The warming climate has not lead to an expected increase in atmospheric moisture over arid and semi-arid regions of the world. The finding, which has surprised scientists, indicates that some regions ...

Beaches and Dunes Globally Squeezed by Roads and Buildings

Jan. 11, 2024 — Beaches and dunes globally squeezed by roads and buildings. Beaches and dunes are becoming increasingly trapped between rising sea levels and infrastructure. Researchers found that today, when ...

Trees in Wetter Regions More Sensitive to Drought

Dec. 13, 2023 — This holiday season brings surprising news about your Christmas tree. Scientists just discovered that globally, trees growing in wetter regions are more sensitive to drought. That means if your tree ...

The Solar Forest

Dec. 13, 2023 — What would be the most effective use of a certain plot of land in terms of the climate crisis: planting a forest, which is a natural means of absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, or erecting ...

How Common Desert Shrub Efficiently Harvests Water from the Air

Oct. 30, 2023 — A team of scientists has revealed the mechanism a desert plant native to the United Arab Emirates uses to capture moisture from the desert air in order to ...

The Race of Water Droplets

Oct. 27, 2023 — How fast does a droplet flow along a fiber? It depends on the diameter of the fiber... and also on its substructure! These are the findings of a study conducted by researchers who are interested in ...

Research Reveals Three New Marsupial Species -- Though All Likely Extinct

Oct. 25, 2023 — The exciting discovery of three new species of a small Australian marsupial has been tempered by the sad fact that each of the newly identified species of mulgara is likely already ...

Prehistoric People Occupied Upland Regions of Inland Spain in Even the Coldest Periods of the Last Ice Age

Oct. 4, 2023 — Paleolithic human populations survived even in the coldest and driest upland parts of Spain, according to a new ...

Early Human Migrants Followed Lush Corridor-Route out of Africa

Oct. 4, 2023 — Scientists have found early human migrants left Africa for Eurasia, across the Sinai peninsula and on through Jordan, over 80-thousand years ago. Researchers have proved there was a ...

Probing the Deep Genetic Structure of Africa

Sep. 22, 2023 — Using ancestry decomposition techniques an international research team has revealed a deeply divergent ancestry among admixed populations from the Angolan Namib desert. This unique genetic heritage ...