TY  - JOUR
A1  - Yair, Aaron
A1  - Bryan, Rorke B.
A1  - Lavee, Hanoch
A1  - Schwanghart, Wolfgang
A1  - Kuhn, Nikolaus J.
T1  - The resilience of a badland area to climate change in an arid environment
JF  - Catena : an interdisciplinary journal of soil science, hydrology, geomorphology focusing on geoecology and landscape evolution
N2  - Badlands have long been considered as model landscapes due to their perceived close relationship between form and process. The often intense features of erosion have also attracted many geomorphologists because the associated high rates of erosion appeared to offer the opportunity for studying surface processes and the resulting forms. Recently, the perceived simplicity of badlands has been questioned because the expected relationships between driving forces for erosion and the resulting sediment yield could not be observed. Further, a high variability in erosion and sediment yield has been observed across scales. Finally, denudation based on currently observed erosion rates would have lead to the destruction of most badlands a long time ago. While the perceived simplicity of badlands has sparked a disproportional (compared to the land surface they cover) amount of research, our increasing amount of information has not necessarily increased our understanding of badlands in equal terms. Overall, badlands appear to be more complex than initially assumed. In this paper, we review 40 years of research in the Zin Valley Badlands in Israel to reconcile some of the conflicting results observed there and develop a perspective on the function of badlands as model landscapes. While the data collected in the Zin Valley clearly confirm that spatial and temporal patterns of geomorphic processes and their interaction with topography and surface properties have to be understood, we still conclude that the process of realizing complexity in the "simple" badlands has a model function both for our understanding as well as perspective on all landscape systems.
KW  - Badlands
KW  - Model landscape
KW  - Climate change
KW  - Resilience
Y1  - 2013
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.catena.2012.04.006
SN  - 0341-8162
VL  - 106
IS  - 4
SP  - 12
EP  - 21
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Amsterdam
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Hikel, Harald
A1  - Yair, Aaron
A1  - Schwanghart, Wolfgang
A1  - Hoffmann, Ulrike
A1  - Strähl, Sarah
A1  - Kuhn, Nikolaus J.
T1  - Experimental investigation of soil ecohydrology on rocky desert slopes in the Negev Highlands, Israel
JF  - Zeitschrift für Geomorphologie
N2  - Purpose: Dry land vegetation is expected to respond sensitively to climate change and the projected variability of rainfall events. Rainfall as a water source is an obvious factor for the water supply of vegetation. However, the interaction of water and surface on rocky desert slopes with a patchy soil cover is also vital for vegetation in drylands. In particular, runoff on rocky surfaces and infiltration capacity of soil patches determine plant available water. Process-based studies into rock-soil interaction benefit from rainfall simulation, but require an approach accounting for the micro-scale heterogeneity of the slope surfaces. This study therefore aims at developing a suitable procedure for examining rock-soil interaction and the relevance of soil volume for storing plant available water in the northern Negev, Israel.
 Materials and methods: To determine the amount of rainfall required to fill the available soil water storage capacity rainfall simulation experiments were conducted. The design of the rainfall-simulator and the selection of the plots aimed specifically at observing infiltration into small soil patches on a micro-scale relevant for the prevalent vegetation cover.
 Results and discussion: The preliminary results of the study in the Negev Desert indicate that the ratio between soil volume and frequency of rainfall events determine the effect of climate change on plant available water and thus ultimately vegetation cover.
 Conclusions: Based on the experiments examining runoff and soil moisture the qualitative understanding of hillslope ecohydrology in a rocky desert environment can be expanded into a quantitative assessment of the potential impact of varying rainfall conditions. The study also illustrates the contribution of rainfall simulation experiments for studies on the impact of climate change.
KW  - Drylands
KW  - Ecohydrology
KW  - Rocky deserts
KW  - Rainfall simulation
Y1  - 2013
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1127/0372-8854/2012/S-00116
SN  - 0372-8854
VL  - 57
IS  - 2
SP  - 39
EP  - 58
PB  - Cramer
CY  - Stuttgart
ER  -