Sasha C. Reed Konrad Wessels Dennis S. Ojima David J.P. Moore William K. Smith Niall P. Hanan Cibele Amaral Flurin Babst Joel A. Biederman Marcy Litvak Natasha MacBean Benjamin Poulter Russell L. Scott Alicja Babst-Kostecka Julia K. Green Raymond F. Kokaly Ryan Pavlick Robert Swap Shawn P. Serbin Compton J. Tucker Lixin Wang Jennifer D. Watts Alejandro Flores James Rattling Leaf Sr. Robert A. Washington-Allen Karen Prentice Emily Kachergis Julian Reyes Jasmine Ryan Michael D. SanClements Henry W. Loescher Allison K Leidner Tyson Swetnam Andrew F. Feldman 2026 Drylands cover 41% of Earth’s land surface, support 36% of the global population, and contribute 60% of global food production. Despite these ecosystems’ importance and high vulnerability to droughts and heatwaves, drylands remain some of the most understudied systems on Earth. Monitoring drylands is challenging due to their complex ecosystem structure of visible soil mixed with diverse plant species that respond rapidly to weather and climate. In 2023 and 2024, a NASA scoping study was conducted for a proposed dryland terrestrial ecology field campaign called Adaptation and Response in Drylands (ARID). Thereafter, the NASA ARID scoping team submitted their campaign proposal to NASA Headquarters, providing a study design for how field, aircraft, and satellite measurements, as well as modeling, would address the most critical fundamental and applied science questions in drylands. The extensive study plan was created by and for the drylands research community – including remote sensors, modelers, experimentalists, and ecologists from across the world – and the overall approach can be further utilized and changed for different uses and data information needs. Here, we summarize the ARID research road map, including its main objectives, field campaign strategy, data end-user support strategy, and U.S. and global community engagement. application/pdf 10.1017/dry.2025.10006 en Cambridge University Press An overview of the NASA Adaptation and Response in Drylands field experiment scoping study article