ASU’s Global Drylands Center engages key actors of dryland stewardship to develop use-inspired research, training and solutions for arid lands around the world.
The vision of the Global Drylands Center is to become the world leader in discovery and education ensuring a sustainable future for drylands.
Our efforts to advance drylands stewardship impact the following:
40% of the global terrestrial area
50% of our world’s livestock
30% of our world’s human population
35% of all terrestrial carbon fixation
Global Drylands Center
research areas
Drylands provide a variety of ecosystem services to support nearly one-third of the world’s human population.
Drylands are defined by scarcity of water and limited soil moisture (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment). Drylands differ in the amount of water they receive and range in type from hyper-arid to dry to subhumid.
As a result, different biomes are represented within global drylands, such as deserts, grasslands, savannahs, Mediterranean ecosystems, and even dryland forests.