Toward quantitative dryland restoration models

Developing solutions to restore degraded drylands is one of the largest research challenges of our time. If we are to meet even a fraction of the restoration goals outlined in numerous international programs, we need to find ways to catalyze systematic knowledge development across disciplines that generate cost‐effective, repeatable, and scalable solutions for our dryland restoration needs. Ecological models are fundamental to this effort and in this opinion article, we describe the opportunities for building a conceptual understanding of dryland ecosystem function to create realistic systems models to improve seedling establishment in restoration. We do this by first discussing trade‐offs among different modeling approaches and then discussing specific recent efforts to develop a systems model for seed enablement for sagebrush steppes systems in the Western United States. We conclude by outlining broader opportunities for integrating systems models to address related dryland restoration challenges and emphasizing the potential complementary aspects that conceptual and systems models may represent in our global efforts to mitigate dryland degradation. As outlined in this special issue, creation of practical solutions will require careful coordination among diverse disciplines. Systems models have been widely used to transcend disciplines to tackle many issues in related fields such as conservation biology and global climate change and should be helpful in making progress toward our dryland restoration goals over the coming decades.