Drylands worldwide are experiencing rapid and extensive environmental change, concomitant with the encroachment of woody vegetation into grasslands. Woody encroachment leads to changes in both the structure and function of dryland ecosystems and has been shown to result in accelerated soil erosion and loss of soil nutrients. Covering 40% of the terrestrial land surface, dryland environments are of global importance, both as a habitat and a soil carbon store. Relationships between environmental change, soil erosion, and the carbon cycle are uncertain. There is a clear need to further our understanding of dryland vegetation change and impacts on carbon dynamics. Here two grass\uffe2\uff80\uff90to\uffe2\uff80\uff90woody ecotones that occur across large areas of the southwestern United States are investigated. This study takes a multidisciplinary approach, combining ecohydrological monitoring of structure and function and a dual\uffe2\uff80\uff90proxy biogeochemical tracing approach using the unique natural biochemical signatures of the vegetation. Results show that following woody encroachment, not only do these drylands lose significantly more soil and organic carbon via erosion but that this includes significant amounts of legacy organic carbon which would previously have been stable under grass cover. Results suggest that these dryland soils may not act as a stable organic carbon pool, following encroachment and that accelerated erosion of carbon, driven by vegetation change, has important implications for carbon dynamics.
", "keywords": ["2. Zero hunger", "soil erosion", "info:eu-repo/classification/ddc/550", "550", "04 agricultural and veterinary sciences", "15. Life on land", "01 natural sciences", "soil carbon pool", "13. Climate action", "biogeochemical tracing", "woody encroachment", "0401 agriculture", " forestry", " and fisheries", "Geosciences", " Multidisciplinary", "dryland vegetation change", "Environmental Sciences", "0105 earth and related environmental sciences"]}, "links": [{"href": "https://doi.org/10.1002/2014jg002635"}, {"rel": "related", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main/items/Journal%20of%20Geophysical%20Research%3A%20Biogeosciences", "name": "related record", "description": "related record", "type": "application/json"}, {"rel": "self", "type": "application/geo+json", "title": "10.1002/2014jg002635", "name": "item", "description": "10.1002/2014jg002635", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main/items/10.1002/2014jg002635"}, {"rel": "collection", "type": "application/json", "title": "Collection", "name": "collection", "description": "Collection", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main"}], "time": {"date": "2014-12-01T00:00:00Z"}}, {"id": "10.5061/dryad.f7m0cfxv5", "type": "Feature", "geometry": null, "properties": {"license": "unspecified", "updated": "2026-06-24T16:22:10Z", "type": "Dataset", "title": "Shrub influence on soil carbon and nitrogen in a semi-arid grassland is mediated by precipitation and largely insensitive to livestock grazing", "description": "unspecifiedFurther information about the data set can be found in the 'metadata' tab on the associated datasheet or in the following article: