We provide a perspective on Walter (Walt) Whitford, a colleague and friend, who was a remarkable ecologist. Walt loved to study the fauna living in the soils of drylands. To study termites, Walt visited Australia in 1986 and 1987 as a guest of the CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) Rangelands Research Laboratory in Deniliquin, New South Wales. Walt joined our research team at a site in the semiarid woodlands about 40 km northwest of Louth, NSW. Walt proposed studies to show that termite activities enhanced the ecosystem functionality of these woodlands. As described in two case studies, we confirmed this hypothesis. Termite activities functioned to increase water infiltration, soil fertility and herbage biomass and diversity within two common features found in these woodlands, mulga log mounds and mulga tree groves, creating fertile patches. Walt returned for a shorter visit in 1990 and encouraged further studies in Australia and elsewhere to confirm that termite-mediated processes enhanced functionality beyond fine-scale patch effects to local watersheds. While Walt’s time in Australia was limited, his mentoring expanded our studies into new areas of theoretical and practical research, including landscape ecology and restoration ecology.

This study, conducted under ESA’s Global Development Assistance programme, presents a pilot demonstration integrating Earth Observation (EO) data into livestock management in Paraguay. Led by GMV in collaboration with FECOPROD and the World Bank, the study applied the Carnegie-Ames-Stanford Approach (CASA) model, driven by Sentinel-2 and climate data, to generate high-resolution, 10-metre dry matter biomass (DMB) maps. These products were calibrated using field plots and integrated into a dedicated application for trend analysis. Model validation against ground-truth bale weights showed strong performance with an R2 of 0.89 and an RMSE of 8.83%. The results suggest that EO-derived insights can support the optimisation of grazing patterns, potentially helping to prevent overgrazing. This provides farmers with actionable data to align feed production with seasonal cycles, improving resource management. However, the current validation is limited to a single year and confined to managed plots within the study area; further work is required to assess model performance across different seasonal conditions and in the broader Chaco landscape, where mixed woody vegetation is prevalent. Notwithstanding these limitations, this scalable approach demonstrates potential to reduce environmental impact while enhancing productivity and offers a replicable framework for Paraguay’s agricultural sector and similar regions globally, pending further validation.

Rangelands are among the most extensive land use systems globally, supporting the livelihoods of billions of people, sustaining pastoral economies, conserving biodiversity and providing critical ecosystem services. Despite their importance, they remain among the least consistently monitored ecosystems. This lack of standardized, high-quality data constrains the ability to assess degradation, evaluate restoration efforts and report progress toward national and global targets. We conducted a review of existing rangeland monitoring frameworks, standards, and remote sensing platforms to understand the methodologies used and indicators measured. Results highlight significant fragmentation and inconsistency in current approaches, underscoring the urgent need for standardized monitoring systems that can capture the complexity and variability of rangeland ecosystems. The Land Degradation Surveillance Framework (LDSF) was developed in response to the need for systematic assessments of soil health, land degradation and vegetation diversity within and across landscapes, including in rangelands. In this article, we present the LDSF as a well-established, scalable approach for monitoring soil and land health, underpinning a globally harmonized rangeland monitoring system. Over the last two decades, the LDSF has been implemented in over 40 countries in the tropics and subtropics and has become an important database of georeferenced indicators of ecosystem health. In this article, we: (i) report findings from a systematic review of existing rangeland monitoring frameworks, standards, and remote sensing platforms; (ii) synthesize the LDSF’s geospatially stratified, hierarchical sampling design and core indicator framework; and (iii) demonstrate how LDSF field data and Earth Observation are combined to generate spatially explicit, statistically robust maps of soil and land health, including in African rangelands.

Dust storms are pervasive across much of the inland and arid regions of California. These extreme meteorological and air pollution events affect the state’s environment and economy, as well as the health of the nearly 5 million people living in dust-prone areas. Developing effective strategies to address the deleterious impacts of dust storms requires a clear understanding of their causes, spatial and temporal variability, and the efficacy of mitigation techniques. This review synthesizes the current state of knowledge on dust storms in California, including where they occur, the landscape and climatic factors governing their geographic distribution, drivers of historical and projected future changes, and their impacts on human health, the economy and natural systems. This work assesses existing approaches for mitigating and adapting to dust storms and identifies critical gaps in understanding that currently limit effective responses within the state. This review is intended as a resource for researchers, community-based organizations, state agencies and policymakers engaged in addressing dust impacts in California. While the focus is regional, the environmental processes, societal impacts and management challenges discussed here are broadly applicable to drylands, making this work relevant beyond California.

Dryland salinization and pasture degradation threaten livestock production in the Paraguayan Chaco, yet field-based ecohydrological assessments remain scarce as ranching is expanding into increasingly marginal environments. Bare land areas with <15% vegetation cover, locally called peladares, are increasingly emerging in the transformed landscapes of the Gran Chaco, leading to reduced rangeland productivity. We conducted a long-term analysis (2000–2025) of land-use change and spectral indices across a ~500,000 ha region in Boquerón, Paraguay, to assess whether these variables alone can explain the negative trend in NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index), or whether other unrelated factors contribute to their emergence. First, we identified bare land areas using a Random Forest classifier. Second, we analyzed when these areas were converted from native forest to pastures. In parallel, we evaluated whether peladares exhibit climate-aligned signals by analyzing long-term trends in NDVI (Landsat 7/8/9), evapotranspiration (MOD16A2GF) and a MODIS LST-based Crop Water Stress Index (CWSI; MOD11A2), using Sen’s slope. Finally, we used GAMs to remove cohort effects from NDVI trends and evaluated residual variation against salinity indices to rank their effectiveness as proxies for identifying peladares. This workflow provides a scalable baseline for screening secondary salinization risk and prioritizing field validation, pasture management and conservation planning in Chaco drylands.

This study analyzes over a century of plant community change on the Colorado Plateau (CP) using repeat photography (1910–2016) and various GIS (Geographic Information Systems) data. We examined 338 repeat photo pairs across three dominant vegetation communities: CP Blackbrush-Mormon-tea Shrubland (CP Blackbrush), Inter-Mountain Basins Semi-Desert Grassland and Big Sagebrush Shrubland (IM grasslands) and CP Pinyon-Juniper Woodland/Shrubland (PJ Woodland). Vegetation changes, including plant counts, plant size, patch shifts, patch size and live plant cover, were evaluated against photo pair time span and spatial covariates, including climate, topography, soil characteristics and land-use history using logistic regression. Responses varied significantly by community type, driven by interacting factors such as time since domestic grazing cessation, climate conditions, and geomorphic setting. CP Blackbrush and IM grasslands showed recovery with longer time since grazing cessation, with increases in plant numbers, patch size, and cover. PJ Woodlands showed mixed, context dependent responses. All communities exhibited increased growth on alluvial landforms, likely from deeper soils and better water availability. Human disturbances lead to a higher probability of patch shifts in CP Blackbrush and IM grasslands. These findings underscore utility of long-term datasets for understanding dryland ecosystem dynamics and highlight how land-use history, climate and geomorphology can inform conservation efforts on dryland ecosystems.

Decomposition mediates the fate of carbon and nutrients in plant litter. While estimates of annual climate variables are good predictors of decomposition in many ecosystems, they are not clearly related to decomposition rates in dryland ecosystems. However, most dryland decomposition appears to be driven by biotic processes (e.g., microbial decay), suggesting that shorter-term moisture dynamics may exert control. We explored relationships between moisture inputs and litter moisture in the hyperarid Namib Desert. Litter from dominant plant species differed in moisture retention over time, depending on whether it was fresh or partially decomposed. Moisture retention was sufficient to support microbial activity only for short time periods, regardless of the amount of simulated rainfall (up to 10 mm). In contrast, fog and high nighttime atmospheric relative humidity increased litter moisture more than rainfall treatments. Experimental burial by soil (1 or 3 cm) reduced fog impacts but increased moisture retention from simulated rainfall, extending the window of opportunity for microbial activity. These data suggest that litter moisture is dynamic and partly decoupled from rainfall inputs in drylands. Further quantification of factors influencing litter moisture retention is needed to improve predictions of dryland decomposition.

Sustainable land management (SLM) practices are promoted to restore degraded ecosystems in the Great Green Wall (GGW) areas, yet their large-scale adoption depends on effective engagement of rural communities. This study analyses the factors shaping adoption of SLM practices, with particular attention to gender differences and the role of women. The research was conducted in six regions of Djibouti, including four intersected by the GGW initiative. Mixed quantitative and qualitative surveys were carried out in 19 villages with 329 farmers and 21 community leaders. An adoption index based on ten SLM practices was constructed and examined across national, regional, and village scales using incremental regression modelling. Results show that adoption levels are significantly higher among men than women. Although the gender effect is strong at the national scale, it decreases at regional and village levels. Adoption is also influenced by farming systems, crop types, and perceived vulnerability to climatic hazards across all scales. At the village level, access to land and the frequency of rural migration further shape adoption patterns. Overall, the findings indicate that constraints limiting women’s engagement in SLM, access to land and labour, are evident at the national scale but vary substantially across local contexts.

The glaciers of High Mountain Asia, a region which is known as “Asian Water Tower,” supply vital water resources to downstream dryland cities across several countries. Climate change threatens this region by accelerating glacier retreat and altering the timing, quantity, quality and variability of meltwater supply. This article examines how these changes affect water security across glacier-fed river basins and downstream dryland cities. We find that enhanced melt may temporarily augment water availability, but it also heightens the risks of flooding and glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) and may encourage socioeconomic development and water demand that become unsustainable after “peak water.” Continued glacier shrinkage will ultimately reduce runoff and threaten long-term water security. Much existing infrastructure and many water governance arrangements were designed using historical records of rainfall, snowfall, ice thickness, runoff timing and peak discharge hydrographs. As these baselines change, design thresholds, reservoir operations and water allocation rules need to be updated using new observations and basin-specific projections. These changes pose particular challenges for dryland cities, where inefficiencies in irrigation systems and limited reservoir regulation constrain the capacity to manage increasingly variable glacier runoff. To address these interconnected challenges, we propose an integrated basin management framework that combines legally and environmentally feasible glacier protection, meltwater storage and seasonal water regulation in upstream areas; ecosystem restoration, carbon sequestration and water retention in midstream areas; and improved water use efficiency, allocation and risk management in downstream cities. Implementation requires transparent monitoring and careful assessment of the environmental, technical, financial, legal and social trade-offs associated with different interventions.

Drylands cover a large fraction of the terrestrial surface and are highly vulnerable to climate change; yet, long-term experimental platforms devoted to their study remain scarce. This case study synthesizes nearly two decades of research conducted at the Aranjuez Experimental Station (AES), a semiarid gypsum steppe in central Spain that has supported multiple observational studies, manipulative experiments and long-term monitoring aimed at understanding how plants, soils and biocrusts interact to regulate dryland structure and functioning and how organisms modulate ecosystem responses to climate change. Research at the AES has shown that plant–plant interactions vary with microclimate, ontogeny, water availability and herbivory; that biocrusts are key regulators of nitrogen, phosphorus and carbon cycling, soil respiration, infiltration and soil water dynamics; and that lichen-dominated biocrusts are highly sensitive to warming. At the same time, a long-term climate change experiment conducted at the AES has revealed that well-developed biocrusts can buffer warming effects on nutrient pools, greenhouse gas fluxes and soil moisture. The results obtained from the AES illustrate the value of long-term, integrative field research for understanding dryland resilience and vulnerability and highlight the key role of biocrusts as modulators of ecosystem responses to climate change.

Ubiquitous human disturbances urgently demand scalable dryland restoration, yet conventional approaches often fail under extreme climates, degraded soils and sparse vegetation. The use of microbes in restoration offers potential utility in extreme cases. While microbes support critical ecosystem functions – from nutrient cycling to stress resilience – their practical application remains inconsistent due to context dependency and mismatched priorities. Analyzing 699 dryland restoration cases, including 190 inoculation experiments, across three decades of successful and unsuccessful case studies, we found that inoculations generally yield positive outcomes, likely due to the widespread use of locally sourced inocula. However, these successes primarily target plant growth rather than restoring broader ecosystem functions. To bridge this gap, we present MICROB, a step-by-step decision framework that transforms microbial theory into an operational tool. By prioritizing practitioner-centered needs (Make it local, Identify priorities) and acknowledging that interventions are unnecessary where functional redundancy (Redundancy and function) or concomitant recovery (Concomitant recovery) suffices, this framework ensures that microbial tools enhance – rather than replace – existing aboveground strategies. Through feasible field implementation (Operate in field) and realistic financial planning (Budget considerations), we propose a scalable method that uses targeted soil conditioning to bypass costly molecular monitoring, providing an economically viable pathway to transform theoretical microbial inference into a practitioner-friendly tool for dryland restoration.

Biological soil crusts (biocrusts) – thin, coherent soil surface layers aggregated and inhabited by communities of tiny photoautotrophic and heterotrophic organisms – support ecosystem functioning in drylands and influence the Earth system. Biocrust loss due to disturbance, global change and land use leads to altered hydrological function, susceptibility to erosion and diminished biogeochemical cycling, with consequences extending to regional and global environmental quality and ecosystem service provisioning. To restore degraded drylands, specific techniques could inform how to 1. produce biocrust biota ex situ for use as an inoculum in degraded environments and then 2. encourage the establishment of the inoculum in high-stress environments. To re-establish lost biocrusts, a promising pathway could be the integration of adding biocrust biota (inoculation), ensuring that it stays where applied (retention) and softening environmental stresses and limitations (amelioration) at approximately the same time. Several techniques, most of them developed in only the past few years, demonstrate this integration: biocrust sods, cloths, pellets, capsules and slurries. Biocrust sods are fabric-reinforced patches of biocrust growing on soil, produced in farms and transported to and deployed intact in field sites. Biocrust cloths are fabrics and sheets with biocrust biota grown directly on their surface in greenhouse-based fog chambers that can be attached to soil in the field. Biocrust pellets are small, protective pieces of a binder material (often clay) infused with biocrust inoculum. Biocrust capsules are biodegradable gel capsules filled with biocrust inoculum, often with protective substances. Both pellets and capsules are broadcast over degraded soils. Biocrust slurries are semi-liquid suspensions of biocrust inoculum and other solids that are sprayed or spread in degraded sites. Emerging techniques like these have the potential to restore highly functional drylands and their ecosystem services. Potential applications include ecological restoration of dryland areas disturbed by fire, overgrazing, agriculture, mining and other factors or environmental engineering in other contexts such as cultural heritage sites, croplands or human infrastructure. The next-generation techniques for biocrust restoration described here are tools that could be applied to solve small- to medium-scaled challenges now and with increased production efficiency and informed, strategic use of the products, large-scaled challenges in the future.