Where are the world's drylands?

Brief overview

Approximately 40 percent of the global land area (excluding Greenland and Antarctica) is considered dryland. Commonly recognized drylands include the African Sahel, Australian Outback, South American Patagonia, and North American Great Plains.

Map description

The extent of drylands within each region ranges from approximately 1.3 to 18 million square kilometers. Asia and Africa have the largest total amounts (18 and close to 13 million square kilometers, respectively); Central America and Europe have the least (Table 1).

Australia has more dryland than any other country in the world, with approximately 6.6 million square kilometers. Other countries with large amounts of dryland include the United States and three countries in Asia: Russia, China, and Kazakhstan – all with more than 2 million square kilometers. Nine additional countries have more than 1 million square kilometers of dryland (Table 2).

While large countries, like Russia and China, have large amounts of dryland, other generally smaller countries are 100 percent, or nearly 100 percent dryland: Botswana, Burkina Faso, Turkmenistan, Iraq, and Moldova. Twelve additional countries are at least 90 percent dryland (Table 3). Two countries are both large and predominantly dryland: Kazakhstan with over 2.6 million square kilometers is 99 percent dryland; and Iran with over 1.4 million square kilometers is 90 percent dryland.

Sources

ESRI. 1993. Environmental Systems Research Institute. Digital Chart of the World CD-ROM. Redlands, CA: ESRI.

UNEP/GRID. 1991. United Nations Environment Program/Global Resource Information Database. Global Digital Datasets for Land Degradation Studies: a GIS Approach. Prepared by U. Diechmann and L. Eklundh. GRID Case Study Series No. 4. UNEP/GEMS and GRID. Nairobi, Kenya.

UNSO/UNDP. 1997. Office to Combat Desertification and Drought/United Nations Development Programme. An Assessment of Population Levels in the World