Ranking the many threats to dryland ecosystems

The dryland biome is vast, serves as home to 38% of the human population, encompasses a variety of climatic regimes and ecosystems, and plays key roles in Earth system functioning. Drylands face a variety of intense global change pressures which can rapidly degrade function and stability in these resource-limited environments. Understanding which global change drivers are most pressing in drylands requires expert efforts to rank and debate the dominant threats to specific ecosystems. This effort will illuminate better approaches to the study and management of drylands while facilitating improved cross-scale understanding of dryland responses to global change.