Climate has an important role on desertification processes through its impacts on dryland soils and vegetation, on dryland hydrology, and on human land use. Research on precipitation dynamics is of major importance to understand desertification processes, especially at local scales. A large part of this book is dedicated to a literature review on the interactions of climate and desertification processes, on issues related to the homogenisation of climate data, on the analysis of extreme precipitation indices, and on the spatial interpolation of rainfall fields. This book provides a...