Quantifying drylands' drought resistance and recovery: the importance of drought intensity, dominant life history and grazing regime.

Projected global change will increase the level of land-use and environmental stressors such as drought and grazing, particularly in drylands. Still, combined effects of drought and grazing on plant production are poorly understood, thus hampering adequate projections and development of mitigation strategies. We used a large, cross-continental database consisting of 174 long-term datasets from >30 dryland regions to quantify ecosystem responses to drought and grazing with the ultimate goal to increase functional understanding in these responses.