9.5%
of land area
0.0%
of global population
0.0%
of food calories
7.3%
of key biodiversity areas
10.9%
of protected areas
0.8%
of carbon storage
Regions without permanent human populations, intensive land use, or natural tree cover
The wild drylands anthrome is characterized by cold, arid and semi-arid regions without natural tree cover (grasslands, shrublands, tundra, desert and barren lands), permanent human populations or intensive land use (in global data). Wild drylands do not contribute to housing the global population or producing food calories. These lands occupy the fourth largest percentage of land area, including the third largest percentage of protected area and sixth largest percentage of key biodiversity area. However, this anthrome ranks as the sixth lowest carbon storage sink out of all the anthrome levels.
Featured image attribution:
Wild Dryland anthromes near Taymyr, Russia. Melting Tundra at Sturmanov, 76.00N 96.30E, Coast of Taymyr, Russia July 1989. Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/QHtyYT
Wild Dryland anthromes near Taymyr, Russia. Melting Tundra at Sturmanov, 76.00N 96.30E, Coast of Taymyr, Russia July 1989. Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/QHtyYT