Desertification

Abstract

While global-scale studies provide information for any region, there are numerous studies that focus on sub-continental scales, providing more in-depth analysis and understanding. Regional and local studies are important to detect location-specific trends in desertification and heterogeneous influences of climate change on desertification. However, these regional and local studies use a wide variety of methodologies, making direct comparisons difficult. For details of the methodologies applied by each study refer to the individual papers.Recent work has also found albedo in dryland regions can be associated with soil surface communities of lichens, mosses and cyanobacteria (Rodriguez-Caballero et al. 2018). These communities compose the soil crust in these ecosystems and due to the sparse vegetation cover, directly influence the albedo. These communities are sensitive to climate changes, with field experiments indicating albedo changes greater than 30% are possible. Thus, changes in these communities could trigger surface albedo feedback processes (limited evidence, high agreement) (Rutherford et al. 2017).