Drylands: Extent of the World’s Drylands
| Analytical Overview |
| The six original aridity zone classes were condensed into the three dryland classes for display on this map. |
Map Projection
Geographic
Map Description
The extent of drylands within each region ranges from approximately 1.3 to 18 million km2. Asia and Africa have the largest total amounts (18 and close to 13 million km2, respectively); Central America and Europe have the least.
Australia has more dryland than any other country in the world, with approximately 6.6 million km2. 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 km2.
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. Two countries are both large and predominantly dryland: Kazakhstan with over 2.6 million km2 is 99 percent dryland; and Iran with over 1.4 million km2 is 90 percent dryland.
| View Large Image |
| View PDF File |
Citation:
WRI. 2002. World Resources Institute. Drylands, People, and Ecosystem Goods and Services: A Web-based Geospatial Analysis. Available online at: http://www.wri.org
Sources:
- United Nations Environment Program/Global Resource Information Database. Prepared by U. Diechmann and L. Eklundh. 1991, Global Digital Datasets for Land Degradation Studies: a GIS Approach. Nairobi, Kenya:UNEP/GEMS and GRID.
- United Nations Environment Programme. 1997, World Atlas of Desertification, 2nd edition. London, UK:
- Office to Combat Desertification and Drought/ United Nations Development Programme. 1997, An Assessment
of Population Levels in the World’s Drylands: Aridity Zones and Dryland Populations. New York, New York, USA: Office to Combat Desertification and
Drought.