Desertification in southern Europe
The threat of desertification appears in southern Europe when periods of prolonged drought are followed by torrential rains falling on steep, unstable terrain. The plant cover of many regions has been degraded since very ancient times. Some are now recovering as a result of emigration and reduce pressure on the land. Tourist and commercial agricultural developments threaten habitat values and water supplies, especially in certain coastal areas. Relatively abundant archeological and literary resources offer excellent opportunities for tracing land use histories and throwing more light on the nature and direction of environmental change. Such longitudinal studies should be integrated with remote sensing and nested sampling on the ground of current landscape conditions and monitoring of current processes.
Could Local Perceptions of Water Stress be Explained by LULCC
Could Local Perceptions of Water Stress be Explained by LULCC? 
Mapping land use/land cover changes (LULCC) is essential for a wide range land use planning and adaptation mechanisms to global warming/climate change, impacts of natural hazard and socioeconomic dynamics on the local to global scales. In this study, we seek to investigate whether water stress in the induced savanna of Southwestern, Nigeria as perceived by the various communities can be explained by LULC changes in the region. LULCC was conducted using orthorectified Landsat multi-temporal imageries for 1970/1972, 1986/1987, 2000/2001 and 2006 using maximum likelihood classification and change detection techniques in ENVI 4.4 software.
A Mediterranean catastrophe
SIR,—Most geologists develop early in their training a healthy scepticism towards theories involving catastrophe. A current hypothesis invokes a violent and almost instantaneous flooding of a desiccated low-lying Mediterranean basin with oceanic waters at the beginning of Pliocene time. Properly, this theory has become the subject of fierce controversy. It was first, I believe, clearly stated by Ruggieri (1962,1967) who claimed that the whole Mediterranean became landlocked towards the close of Miocene time, and dried out to give rise to the evaporites which form the Gessoso-Solfifera Formation in Italy and similar deposits elsewhere. In Sicily, the Miocene Gessoso-Solfifera is overlain by the Trubi Marls of Pliocene age and these marls contain planktonic foraminifera and psychrospheric ostracods which indicate cold, deep water directly open to the ocean (Benson & Sylvester-Bradley, 1971). Ruggieri's hypothesis, fantastic as it seems, has been greatly strengthened by the findings made during the Glomar-Challenger cruise in the Mediterranean. Cores have revealed thick Miocene evaporites in all the deep basins, east and west. These are overlain by oceanic sediments closely comparable to the Trubi Marls. And the evaporites in the Red Sea seem to tell the same story. Two parts of Ruggieri's hypothesis are particularly controversial and these can be explained in other ways. The first alternative claims that the so-called evaporites do not indicate desiccation, but were deposited in submarine conditions. The second claims that the Pliocene transgression was not, by any manner of means, instantaneous, the marine deposits overlying the evaporites being of different ages in different parts of the Mediterranean. The issues are clear-cut but lack documentation. May I please appeal to those who know the sections to place them on record. It should be perfectly possible to mount an impartial investigation which would resolve the issue. This is especially important in Italy, where directly contrary claims have been made. If the catastrophists are right: