![]() They also support around 44 percent of the world’s cultivated systems and half of its livestock.ĭryland peoples have developed unique strategies to cope with low water and climatic variability, such as a huge range of unique systems of water harvesting, cultivation practices, climate forecasting and medicinal plant use. Semi-arid landsĭorhodor, Wikimedia Commons How do drylands support livelihoods?ĭrylands are home to more than 38 percent of the Earth’s population – that’s around 3 billion people. While dry and sub-humid lands make up only 8.7 percent of the Earth’s land surface, the majority of the world’s crops and livestock are farmed within these ecosystems. They tend to have unpredictable rainfall patterns, but their biodiversity is well-adapted for this, with multi-layered, structurally-complex vegetation that facilitates high water infiltration and storage and protects against erosion. They support the densest human populations of all dryland types and include biomes like grasslands and savannahs. These are the least-arid of all drylands, with an aridity index of 0.5–0.65. Dry and sub-humid lands Southern Sicily has a dry climate. There are four sub-categories of drylands, which are classified according to their aridity indices: dry and sub-humid semi-arid arid and hyper-arid. What are the different types of drylands? Water is usually scarce, rainfall tends to be unpredictable and seasonal climate fluctuations are often extreme. Drylands are situated in both tropical and temperate areas, often with high mean temperatures. They include ecosystems such as rangelands, grasslands, woodlands, savannahs and scrublands, comprising more than 40 percent of the Earth’s land surface. What are drylands?ĭrylands are biomes in which, on average, water transfer from the land to the atmosphere through evaporation and transpiration outweighs rainfall by at least 150 percent – a calculation that’s known as the aridity index. Take a moment to school up on these un-sung biomes, and see why they deserve so much more than a second glance. The Earth’s drylands are extremely complex, delicate and ever-evolving structures that provide vast amounts of the world’s food are home to a giant chunk of the global population and contain a diverse range of tough, resilient species that have valuable secrets to share about both our collective past and our common future – including our responses to the climate crisis. While we’re often confronted with images of tall-canopied rainforests being felled or waters plagued with plastic, the slow shrinkage and disappearance of low-lying grasses and shrubs in the world’s drier regions frequently fails to capture emotion, attention, funding and concern. On 2-3 June, the Global Landscapes Forum will host a digital forum, Restoring Africa’s Drylands: Accelerating Action on the Ground.
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