A better understanding of the implications of climate-induced changes in dryland ecosystems under future climate scenarios for carbon sink-source dynamics is urgently needed. Degradation of dryland ecosystems would have strong negative societal and economic impacts, especially in developing countries 8.

Enhanced warming and increasingly frequent and severe droughts 5, 6 threaten the ability of these ecosystems to sequester carbon and maintain biodiversity 7. Grasslands (GRA), shrublands, and savannas (SAVs) are the primary ecosystems of dryland regions 2, 3, 4. Our results highlight the vulnerability of dryland subtypes to more frequent and severe climate extremes and suggest that regional variations will require different mitigation strategies.Дrylands cover ~41% of the EarthвЂ™s land surface and support more than 38% of the global population 1. Dryland expansion and climate-induced conversions among sub-humid, semi-arid, arid, and hyper-arid subtypes will lead to substantial changes in regional and subtype contributions to global dryland GPP variability. Further, GPP per unit dryland area will decrease as degradation of historical drylands outpaces the higher GPP of expanded drylands. Because drylands will largely expand into formerly productive ecosystems, this increase in dryland GPP may not increase global GPP. Here we show that by 2100 total dryland GPP will increase by 12 В± 3% relative to the 2000вЂ“2014 baseline. Drylands are projected to experience accelerated expansion over the next century, but the implications of this expansion on variability in gross primary production (GPP) remain elusive. Drylands cover 41% of EarthвЂ™s surface and are the largest source of interannual variability in the global carbon sink.

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