





“It’s like a situation where you’re making hamburgers but run out of beef. You can’t just slip in another bun and still produce a hamburger.”

Drylands, which are defined by predominantly lower levels of moisture, cover about 41 percent of the earth’s surface. The study suggests that people who depend on those ecosystems for crops, livestock forage, fuel and fiber will find their resources increasingly restrained.


“We can probably expect more and more dust in the air,” he said.


“This is a testament to the power of networked science,” Bowker said, adding that it would have been “prohibitively expensive” for any one researcher or research group to complete the project.