“The West’s Lyme disease” gets less attention as cases rise – even while drastically undercounted. Climate change and land development are worsening the picture.

Biological soil crusts are complex communities composed of lichens, mosses, bacteria, and cyanobacteria that create a living skin on the soil surface across drylands worldwide. Although small in size...

The significant influence of shading highlights the role of environmental factors in shaping plant communities of this dryland system, while the evidence of seed depletion combined with the influence....

Biological soil crusts are complex communities composed of lichens, mosses, bacteria, and cyanobacteria that create a living skin on the soil surface across drylands worldwide. Although small in size...

Dryland degradation from unsustainable land use and increasing aridity often manifests as bare, interconnected areas that facilitate the loss or redistribution of resources (soil, seeds, and nutrient...

This study investigates carbon uptake in biological soil crusts (biocrusts) under varying precipitation regimes, testing pulse-response strategies in moss- and cyanobacteria-dominated crusts. The res...

“The loss of this science doesn’t just mean fewer data points,” writes Kristina Young. “It means fewer tools to protect water supplies, fewer insights to guide wildfire mitigation and fewer answers wh...

Carnegie Science's Desert Laboratory in Tucson, Arizona served as an intellectual hub where pioneering ecologists helped transform the emerging discipline of ecology from descriptive natural history i...

Land Degradation & Development is an interdisciplinary journal for the environmental and soil science communities covering all aspects of sustainable land management.

How climate change will impact microbial community growth is unclear. Here, the authors use a field experiment with varying global change factors, finding fungal growth more drought-resistant than mic...

This December, the United Nation Convention to Combat Desertification’s 16th Conference of Parties (UNCCD COP16) brought together world leaders to discuss desertification, land degradation and drought, all of which have detrimental impacts on planetary security well beyond climate change.

Dryland restoration requires plant materials capable of performing well despite difficult growing conditions. Selecting plant materials with higher intraspecific trait variability (ITV) may support s...

Land Degradation & Development is an interdisciplinary journal for the environmental and soil science communities covering all aspects of sustainable land management.

Human-caused global warming helped increase dry conditions on every continent, scientists said in a new report, as talks on halting desertification were underway in Saudi Arabia.

In Kenya, a team of dedicated researchers is working to assess the impact of grassland management on soil health, nutrient cycling, and carbon sequestration…

Ten “Land Heroes” from around the world, all under the age of 35, have been chosen by the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) to share their achievements and ideas for sustainable land management in the face of the growing...

Report calls for course correction to avoid land abuse ‘compromising Earth’s capacity to support human and environmental wellbeing’