Drylands represent our planet’s largest terrestrial biome, making up >40% of the land surface and driving the interannual variability and trend in Earth’s terrestrial carbon sink. Drylands respond rapidly and non-linearly to anthropogenic change, with important implications for carbon and climate at the global scale. Yet our understanding of dryland carbon cycling and its response to change remain poor relative to other biomes. Concurrently, key aspects of dryland carbon cycling are distinct from other ecosystem types. For example, drylands host large expanses of photosynthetic soil (i.e., biocrusts), enormous stocks of inorganic soil carbon, and variable CO₂ fluxes that are difficult to resolve with low per-unit-area organic carbon storage. Here we aim to join diverse dryland carbon cycling data – from remote sensing, eddy co-variance towers, atmospheric measurements, automated soil CO₂ assessment, modeling, and climate experiments – to assemble a contemporary understanding of dryland carbon cycling and its response to change.

• GC - Global Environmental Change
• SY - Science and Society

• ESA: Ecological Society of America -
• EGU: European Geosciences Union -
• SSSA: Soil Science Society of America -
• WCRP: World Climate Research Programme -