Drylands are highly sensitive to changes in climate and land use, and changes in drylands impact critical ecosystem services (e.g. grazing, food and fuelwood production) impacting livelihoods of ~2 billion people worldwide. These ecosystems have also experienced some of the most extreme climate in recent decades, especially in the western US, where thousand-year droughts and extreme heat waves negatively impact livelihoods and natural landscapes. 

Despite their importance, these ecosystems are under-studied, and thus new research is needed to understand and mitigate dryland climate and anthropogenic changes. For numerous stakeholders, including Federal Managers (BLM, Forest Service), Indigenous Sovereign Nations, State, private and community land-managers, the ARID Field campaign will provide critically needed earth observation tools for sustainable management of the drylands of the western USA and beyond. 

ARID field programs will reflect a strategy for detailed, geographically focused, and comprehensive field, airborne, and orbiting data collection in North American drylands. They will focus on the western USA, with complementary programs in internationally distributed field sites representing the global variability in dryland environments. The remote sensing of drylands poses unique challenges that will require a coordinated, multi-sensor, multi-scale approach with sensors on towers, UAS’s, NASA aircraft and current and future satellites. ARID science themes will focus on anthropogenic and climate change, biodiversity, carbon and water dynamics (e.g. droughts and pulse events), human dimensions and strategies for dryland community adaptation to, and mitigation of, global climate change.