The continued aridity trend occurring in many regions worldwide is a manifestation of the response of the earth system to global change. It hinders severely the sustainable development of these regions. Northern China is one of the largest and most affected regions in the world. This book documents the climate change in its arid and semi-arid areas on decadal to geological time scales based on analyses of various data sources. These analyses improved our understanding of the potential mech...

Global environmental change occupies a central niche in the pantheon of modern sciences. There is an urgent need to know and understand the way in which global biogeochemical cycles have changed over different time scales in the past and are likely to do so in the future. Equally important, it is necessary to determine the extent to which natural variability and that induce by anthropogenic activities are bringing about change. A number of international co-operative scientific programmes a...