The photographs clearly show an arid region being slowly brought back to life, over a period of 30 years.

BBC: Atlas shows vanishing landscape

Fourth, Israel must have control of its water resources, which are of great long-term importance in an arid region where there are already shortages.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Sharon Says 'No' to the Golan's Surrender

However, this seemingly dry and arid region in southern Israel is now home to a burgeoning wine route, thanks to a group of pioneering 21st-century farmers and their use of computerized drip irrigation.

BBC: The Negev desert wine route

But recent fighting in the Sahel the arid region just south of the Sahara Desert has sent jihadi fighters looking for new havens, raising fears that Tunisia is in their sights.

NPR: Jihadi Peril Makes Its Way To Tunisia

Researchers from Eindhoven University of Technology and Hong Kong Polytechnic have leveraged those temperature swings to help solve the arid region hydration conundrum with a cotton material that absorbs water straight from the surrounding air.

ENGADGET

One country on the opposite side of Africa where that scenario may already have started to play out is Mali, the third poorest nation in the world, where rainfall levels have been in decline for the past 30 years across the semi-arid Sahel region.

CNN: Climate change 'to create 1B refugees'

Most readers, I think, will find this region arid, and inherently inartistic.

NEWYORKER: Laureate of Terror

And just outside the city is where, a mere couple decades ago, a handful of winemakers decided to ignore most local conventional and institutional wisdom, and plant this cool, arid, rugged region with Pinot Noir vines.

FORBES: New Zealand Wine's Need For Nudity

This small town in the middle of an arid, barren region but right in the middle of Philip's Hispanic territories soon became the critical political hub not just of the peninsula but the rapidly expanding Spanish Empire.

BBC: Eurozone crisis: Catalonia's place in Spain

Interestingly, rainfall patterns in the Sahel region, an arid landscape just south of the Sahara Desert where Darfur Lake is located, mirror global temperature patterns.

FORBES: Despite What You Hear, Global Warming Is Still Benefiting Africa

Farmers soak up about 85% of the border region's scarce water, and on the semi-arid land on both sides they grow thirsty cash crops like sugar cane.

ECONOMIST: IOU H2O