Changing Deserts

Deserts - vast, empty places where time appears to stand still. The very word conjures images of endless seas of sand, blistering heat and a virtual absence of life. However, deserts encompass a large variety of landscapes and life beyond our stereotypes. As well as magnificent Saharan dunes under blazing sun, the desert concept encompasses the intensely cold winters of the Gobi, the snow- covered expanse of Antarctica and the rock- strewn drylands of Pakistan. Deserts are environments in perpetual flux and home to peoples as diverse as their surroundings, peoples who grapple with a broad spectrum of cultural, political and environmental issues as they wrest livelihoods from marginal lands.The cultures, environments and histories of deserts, while fundamentally entangled, are rarely studied as part of a network. To bring different disciplines together, the 1st Oxford Interdisciplinary Deserts Conference in March 2010 brought together a wide range of researchers from backgrounds as varied as physics, history, archaeology anthropology, geology and geography. This volume draws on the diversity of papers presented to give an overview of current research in deserts and drylands. Readers are invited to explore the wide range of desert environments and peoples and the ever-evolving challenges they face.

Foreword Troy Sternberg and Lisa Mol 1. Introduction. The Nature and Diversity of Deserts Andrew Goudie I. Changing Environment 2. Shedding Light on the Past: Records of Past Conditions in the Namib Desert and the Use of Lumines- cence Dating Abi Stone 3. Soil Organic Carbon and Soil Respiration in Deserts: Examples from the Kalahari Andrew D. Thomas, Stephen R. Hoon, Helen Mairs and Andrew J. Dougill 4. Hominin Evolutionary History in the Arabian Desert and the Thar Desert Michael D. Petraglia, Huw Groucutt and James Blinkhorn 5. Can Carbon Finance Enhance Desert Afforestation and Serve Smallholders' Needs? Henri Rueff and Moshe Schwartz II. Changing People 6. 'Saharan Waterscapes'. Traditional Knowledge and Historical Depth of Water Management in the Akakus Mts. (SW Libya) Savino di Lernia, Isabella Massamba N'Siala and Andrea Zerboni 7. Karez versus Tubewell Irrigation: Comparative Social Acceptability and Practicality of Sustainable Groundwater Development in Balochistan, Pakistan Daanish Mustafa 8. Living off Uncertainty: the Intelligent Animal Production of Dryland Pastoralists Saverio Kratli and Nikolaus Schareika 9. Authenticity in the desert landscapes of Oman: the Jiddat-il-Harasiis, Oman Dawn Chatty 10. Pristine Wilderness, Participatory Archaeology and the Custodianship of Heritage in Mursiland Marcus W.R. Brittain and Timothy A.R. Clack III: Changing Problems 11. Conserving History in Changing Arid Environments: a Geomorphological Approach Lisa Mol and Heather Viles 12. Water in the Desert: Applying Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) Lessons for Climate Change in Arid Lands Katherine Donovan and Ilan Kelman 13. Hazard Impact on Desert Environments Troy Sternberg 14. Knowledge Systems Have Not Served the Drylands Well: Reflections on Stakeholder Interactions Mike Mortimore 15. Human - Environment Interactions: the Invasion of Prosopis juliflora in the Drylands of North-east Ethiopia Simone Rettberg and Detlef Muller-Mahn 16. Conclusions David Thomas Index