Climate change and environment at the desert fringe, northern Negev, Israel

The paleoclimatologiccal and geological evolution of the northern Negev desert in the late Pleistocene is analysed on the basis of data obtained on present-day geomorphic processes in arid rocky and sandy areas. The study is relevant to the problem of the impact of climatic change in semi-arid and arid areas. The study focuses on the case of a change from drier to wetter conditions. Two main points emerge from the study: 1) Climate change in arid and semi-arid areas is not limited to a change in climatological variables such as precipitation and temperature. Deposition of aeolian loess is characteristic of wet periods whereas deposition of eolian sand occurs during dry periods. 2) Loess penetration in the northern Negev, although occurring in a wet period, has pronounced non-uniform spatial effects depending on the local site-specific surface properties which prevailed in the area before loess deposition. -from Author