Wiktionary
n. (plural of dryland English)
Wikipedia
Drylands (1999) (subtitled "A Book for the World's Last Reader") is a Miles Franklin Award-winning novel by Australian author Thea Astley. This novel shared the award with Benang by Kim Scott.
Drylands are defined by their scarcity of water. They are zones where precipitation is counterbalanced by evaporation from surfaces and transpiration by plants ( evapotranspiration). UNEP defines drylands as tropical and temperate areas with an aridity index of less than 0.65. The drylands can be further classified into four sub-types: dry sub-humid lands, semi-arid lands, arid lands, and hyper-arid lands. Some authorities consider Hyper-arid lands as deserts ( UNCCD) although a number of the world’s deserts include both hyper arid and arid climate zones. The UNCCD excludes hyper-arid zones from its definition of drylands.
Drylands cover 41.3% of the earth’s land surface, including 15% of Latin America, 66% of Africa, 40% of Asia and 24% of Europe. Worldwide there is a significantly greater proportion of drylands in developing countries (72%), and the proportion increases with aridity: almost 100% of all Hyper Arid lands are in the developing world. Nevertheless, the United States, Australia and several countries in Southern Europe also contain significant dryland areas.
Drylands are complex, evolving structures whose characteristics and dynamic properties depend on many interrelated links between climate, soil, and vegetation.
Usage examples of "drylands".
It was a city perched a mile high, loved by ranchers who brought their cattle to the winter show, loved by lonely men out on the drylands who came in for a good steak dinner, but loved especially by the Mexicans, who could lose themselves in the small streets where Spanish was spoken.
Now that he was trying to peddle drylands, it was even more important.
These apparent drylands could grow wheat, enormous quantities of it in any year when the normal thirteen inches of rain fell.
All night he tossed uneasily, brooding about the fortune he was throwing away, the retreat he was making just when the drylands were about to come into their own.
His journeys east through the drylands sometimes brought tears to his eyes as he surveyed that chronicle of lost hope.
Most NCO training courses, though reached by shuttle from Copper Mountain, were actually dispersed to other facilities on the same continent: Drylands, in the northern plains, Camp Engleton in the coastal swamp, Big Trees far to the west.
Instead, she hoped she would have a chance to see the steppes near Drylands, so much like her homeworld, and maybe climb a mountain when she had some leave coming.
Her years at the Academy had introduced her to high-altitude passenger aircraft like the one she'd been in from Drylands to the coast.
Even with the rare wayward current from the Sahul Sea, Hissar was a city born of inland drylands and deserts.
How was it they were so clever then, making all sorts of wonders like ships that fell from the sky and then jumped back into it again and that strange white hold out in the hottest part of the drylands where the hunting was terrible?
Using a broken chunk of sandstone for cover, he studied the drylands below, finally spotting a band of tiny figures retracing the route he had just taken, mounted on the humpbacked riding beasts called yirns.
Near what must have been the time of your birth, scouts found dead hrinn with terrible burns, both up here in the hills and down along the river, and even out in the drylands where no Lines hold land.
It showed her the boxs functions, which ranged from summoning the strange white hold in the drylands, to calling the females of other Lines who apparently wanted the same miracles for Anktan that she now did.
Now that we have allowed the Outsiders to build their Dead-smelling hold in our drylands, the cublings talk about flying through the air like jits and speaking through metal boxes and killing with sticks instead of their own clawsand no one seeks out the Voice or the patterns/in/progress anymore.
It showed her the box's functions, which ranged from summoning the strange white hold in the drylands, to calling the females of other Lines who apparently wanted the same miracles for Anktan that she now did.