Restoration and Rehabilitation of Degraded Land in Arid and Semiarid Environments: Editorial

Novel promising methods in land rehabilitation include the use of polymers (Liao, Yang, Yu, Wu, & Ren, 2018) and bio-inoculants such cyanobacteria isolated from soil biocrusts (Román, Roncero-Ramos, Chamizo, Rodríguez-Caballero, & Cantón, 2018) and endophytic bacteria (Galaviz et al., 2018). As an alternative to compost application, Galaviz et al. (2018) inoculated degraded desert soils with the endophytic bacteria Bacillus pumilus , which resulted in an increase of the Rhi-zobium population in the soil. Román et al. (2018) highlight the potential of inoculated N-fixing cyanobacteria from soil biocrust to increase soil C and N in semiarid degraded soils (Figure 3). With advanced tools such as highly specified molecular technologies, these approaches have expanded from the agricultural and biotechnological sectors to the fields of ecosystem restoration and land rehabilitation opening new possibilities in these research areas (Muñoz-Rojas, 2018). Most of the papers published in this special issue were presented at the European Geosciences Union Assembly in Vienna, Austria, in April 2017. All manuscripts were externally peer reviewed in accordance with Land Degradation & Development guidelines. We would like to thank the external reviewers for their critical asessments that have contributed to a successful special issue as well as the editorial support from Chris Barrow (Founding Editor) and the entire editorial and production team. Finally, we thank the authors for their exceptional contributions to this special issue.