About this Research Topic
Although there is an increasing awareness of the potential impact that the changing environment has on dryland plant function and community dynamics, there is still considerably less theoretical and empirical attention from scientists to dryland plants compared to plants from other ecosystems. This less attention is hampering the ability to improve our understanding and predict the structure and functioning of dryland ecosystems. Studies focus on the effects of environmental changes in dryland ecosystems differ from other ecosystems because of the characteristic water limitation of drylands.
This Research Topic aims to highlight the ecological role of plants in drylands under human-induced environmental changes. Contributions to this Research Topic will focus on dryland plants in relation to changes in climate, such as rising temperature, heat waves, and altered precipitation, and in human activities, such as grazing, land abandonment, mining, deforestation, soil loss, and human-induced change in land use or land cover. The scale of the contributions will be at local, regional and globally. We welcome authors to report original and novel research on dryland plant adaptation and responses, either from temporal, spatial observations along environmental gradients, or from simulation experiments that focus on short-term and rapid effects of environmental changes. Simulation modeling approaches will also be considered. We encourage submissions from various disciplines, both case studies and reviews that document how environmental changes affect plant growth, vegetation, ecosystem and how the abiotic environment might shift the intensity of these interactions. Submission to this Research Topic is limited to authors previously contacted by the Topic Editors.
Keywords: Future Climates, Drylands, Ecosystem Functioning, Plant Adaptation, Vegetation Dynamics
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.