BACKGROUND In the Anthropocene, there is a need to better understand the catastrophic
effects that climate and land-use change may have on ecosystems, Earth system …

The rehabilitation and restoration of land is a key strategy to recover services-goods and
resources-ecosystems offer to the humankind. This paper reviews key examples to …

There is growing concern over tipping points arising in ecosystems because of the crossing
of environmental thresholds. Tipping points lead to abrupt and possibly irreversible shifts …

Understanding how drylands respond to ongoing environmental change is extremely
important for global sustainability. In this review, we discuss how biotic attributes, climate …

Responses of terrestrial ecosystems to climate change have been explored in many regions
worldwide. While continued drying and warming may alter process rates and deteriorate the …

Most ecological studies of the effects of climate on species are based on average conditions
above ground level (measured by meteorological stations) averaged across 100 km 2 or …

Many systems on our planet shift abruptly and irreversibly from the desired state to an
undesired state when forced across a “tipping point”. Some examples are mass extinctions …

Vegetation Turing patterns play a critical role in the ecological functioning of arid and semi‐
arid ecosystems. However, the long-range spatial features of these patterns have been …

The origins and development of the arid and highly seasonal steppe-desert biome in Central
Asia, the largest of its kind in the world, remain largely unconstrained by existing records. It …

How do we explain the remarkably abrupt changes that sometimes occur in nature and
society--and can we predict why and when they happen? This book offers a comprehensive …