Professional Documents
Culture Documents
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.
The drylands are the areas of undependable rainfall in which the average precipitation is
deficient in relation to water requirements of crops.
According to United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), drylands are defined as those
lands that have:
A precipitation (P) over potential evapotranspiration (PET)
Ratio of less than 0.65 (this ratio is referred to as aridity index).
Categories of drylands of the world
Somaliland Agro-Ecological zones
Somaliland topographic map
Categories of drylands of the world
Drylands are classified based on the aridity index; semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas (0.50 to 0.65).
The hyper arid zones (ratio less than 0.05) has low annual rainfall of less than 100 mm. it has
sparse annual and perennial vegetation and scattered shrubs where true nomadic pastoralism is
practiced.
In the arid zones (0.05 to 0.20), pastoralism and little farming is practiced, except where irrigation is
possible. Vegetation typically is sparse, comprised of annual and perennial grasses, other herbaceous
plants, shrubs, and small trees. Rainfall variability is high; with annual amounts ranging between 100
and 300mm.
Semiarid zones (0.20 to 0.50) often can support rainfed and sustained levels of agricultural
production. Sedentary livestock production occurs. Annual rainfall varies from 300 to 800 mm,
depending upon the relative occurrences of summer and winter rains.
Dry sub-humid areas have wetter conditions; crops are grown and have higher population densities.
Categories of dryland agriculture
Crop production constraints in dryland areas Climatic
Climatic constraints