Intensifying drought risk weakens vegetation resilience in global drylands

Whether drought-induced vegetation loss risk and ecosystem resilience in arid regions evolve synergistically or trade off remains unclear. Here, we project that medium-to-high risk areas in global drylands will expand by 9.9%–15.3% in the future. By developing a multi-model vegetation resilience trajectory diagnostic framework, we found that 57.4% of vegetated areas experienced declining resilience historically. In a low-emissions pathway, the fraction with declining resilience drops from 51.2% during 2015–2060 to 42.6% during 2061–2100, but rises to 64.8 ± 2.0% under medium- and high-emissions pathways. Rising risk is mainly driven by intensified atmospheric drought, while declining resilience results from weakened carbon dioxide fertilization and aggravated aridity. The centroids of high-risk and low-resilience regions will shift toward the northern margin of the Tibetan Plateau in Asia and southward in South America; ecologically sensitive zones with high risk and decreasing resilience (32.0–50.1% of drylands) warrant precise prevention and management. Over half of vegetated areas in global arid regions have lost ecosystem resilience, and this decline is projected to coincide with greater drought induced risk under future climates, based on a diagnostic analysis of multi model resilience trajectories.