Climatic resource constraints and global drylands

Drylands are usually associated with ‘hot’ areas but can in fact be affected by both severe moisture shortage and low temperature.
A severe moisture constraint is defined as where the aridity index is below 0.35.
A severe coldness constraint is defined where the annual sum of growing degree days (above 0°C) is less than 2000.
This simple map shows areas where such constraints occur either single or combined.

 

Author:

E. De Pauw

Institute:

ICARDA GIS unit

Decription:

 

Drylands are usually associated with ‘hot’ areas but can in fact be affected by both severe moisture shortage and low temperature.
A severe moisture constraint is defined as where the aridity index is below 0.35.
A severe coldness constraint is defined where the annual sum of growing degree days (above 0°C) is less than 2000.
This simple map shows areas where such constraints occur either single or combined. The classes are as follows:

  • No severe aridity or coldness constraints
  • Severe aridity constraint
  • Severe coldness constraint
  • Both severe aridity and coldness constraints

 

Source Data:

 


Hijmans, R.J., S.E. Cameron, J.L. Parra, P.G. Jones and A. Jarvis, 2005. Very high resolution interpolated climate surfaces for global land areas. International Journal of Climatology 25: 1965-1978. (http://www.worldclim.org/current)


Stefan Siebert, Petra Döll, Sebastian Feick, Jippe Hoogeveen and Karen Frenken. 2007.Global Map of Irrigation Areas version 4.0.1. Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany / Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, Italy


Trabucco, A., and Zomer, R.J. 2009. Global Aridity Index (Global-Aridity) and Global Potential Evapo-Transpiration (Global-PET) Geospatial Database. CGIAR Consortium for Spatial Information.

Published online, available from the CGIAR-CSI GeoPortal at: http://www.csi.cgiar.org/ .

 

 

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