Drylands represent the planet's largest terrestrial biome and evidence suggests these landscapes have large potential for creating feedbacks to future climate. Recent studies also indicate that dryland ecosystems are responding markedly to climate change. Biological soil crusts (biocrusts) ‒ soil surface communities of lichens, mosses, and/or cyanobacteria ‒ comprise up to 70% of dryland cover ...

Over 40% of the earth’s land surface are drylands that are home to approximately 2.5 billion people. Livelihood sustainability in drylands is threatened by a complex and interrelated range of social, economic, political, and environmental changes that present significant challenges to researchers, policy makers, and, above all, rural land users. Dynamic ecological and environmental change model...

EDITORIAL article Front. Environ. Sci., 04 September 2023Sec. Drylands Volume 11 - 2023 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fenvs.2023.1266103

Soil organic matters are considered as the animal and plant residues and active components of soils. The cultivation practices will cause the quick removal of organic matters in soils even in those which are not affected by erosion. This study was carried out to assess the level of soil humus in the pilot area, to investigate the positive or negative effect of humus level on soil and to introdu...

Abstract The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group II Report Adaptation, Impacts and Vulnerability identifies the urgent need to embark upon Resilient Development Pathways. acknowledges that adaptation needs be undertaken together with mitigation development, in joined-up, inclusive, just equitable ways, across multiple arenas of engagement. In highly vulnerable systems...

Drylands worldwide, together with the variously nomadic peoples who live there, are associated with the incidence of poverty and environmental degradation. Corresponding assertions of pending social and ecological collapse have paved the way for hegemonic development and policy interventions focusing on the settlement of formerly mobile populations, reductions of livestock numbers, land privati...

Water resources play a vital role in ecosystem stability, human survival, and social development in drylands. Human activities, such as afforestation and irrigation, have had a large impact on the water cycle and vegetation in drylands over recent years. The Badain Jaran Desert (BJD) is one of the driest regions in China with increasing human activities, yet the connection between human managem...