Search

Understanding dryland dynamics is essential to predict future climate trajectories. However, there remains large uncertainty on the extent to which drylands are expanding or greening, the drivers of dryland vegetation shifts, the relative importance of different hydrological processes regulating ecosystem functioning, and the role of land-use changes and climate variability in shaping ecosystem productivity. We review recent advances in the study of dryland productivity and ecosystem function and examine major outstanding debates on dryland responses to environmental changes. We highlight often-neglected uncertainties in the observation and prediction of dryland productivity and elucidate the complexity of dryland dynamics. We suggest prioritizing holistic approaches to dryland management, accounting for the increasing climatic and anthropogenic pressures and the associated uncertainties.

Accurately assessing green and blue water requirements from croplands is fundamental to promote sustainable water management. In the last decade, global hydrological models have provided important insights into global patterns of water requirements for crop production. As important as these models are, they do not provide monthly crop-specific and year-specific data of green and blue water requirements. Gridded crop-specific products are therefore needed to better understand the spatial and temporal evolution of water demand. Here, we present a global gridded database of monthly crop-specific green (rain-fed) and blue (irrigated) water requirements for 23 main crops and 3 crop groups obtained using our WATNEEDS model. For the time periods in which our dataset matched, these estimates are validated against existing global products and satellite based datasets of evapotranspiration. The data are publicly available and can be used by practitioners in the water-energy-food nexus to assess the water sustainability of our food and energy systems at multiple spatial (local to global) and temporal (seasonal to multi-year) scales., Measurement(s) crop-specific green water requirements • crop-specific blue water requirements Technology Type(s) computational modeling technique Factor Type(s) crop type • year of data collection • monthly measurement Sample Characteristic - Environment area of cropland Sample Characteristic - Location Earth (planet) Machine-accessible metadata file describing the reported data: 10.6084/m9.figshare.12706523

Owing to a technical error, this Article was published a day later than stated. The correct date of publication is 7 November 2017; all versions of the Article have now been corrected accordingly.