**Preface to "Soil Hydrological Processes in Desert Regions"**

Soil hydrology is an inter-discipline of soil science and hydrology that mainly focuses on interactive pedologic and hydrologic processes and properties. The Critical Zone is the thin layer of the Earth's terrestrial surface and near-surface environment and plays a fundamental role in sustaining life and humanity. Deserts, a unique ecosystem, becomes a more critical research area in Earth's Critical Zone framework but is relatively less managed. There is such vast literature suggesting that we could tip the climate to a more humid and productive stage if we could vegetate that desert. The significance of the desert ecosystem management requires supportive and regulatory ecosystem services, ecosystem sustainability, and a feedback loop between ecological and hydrological processes. Although the benefits of reversing desertification, preventing erosion, and providing biomass have been recognized, the effects of anthropogenic revegetation on water and carbon cycles, the critical process of the terrestrial ecosystem, are still poorly understood.

This reprint highlights the current understanding of the soil hydrological processes in desert regions, as well as the plant responses to soil water. Likewise, this reprint will not present all the aspects, such as the challenges of soil hydrological process research and its opportunities in the desert regions. It only provides notable highlights to help understand the soil hydrological processes and their application in desertification control, particularly regarding the ecological engineering approach. In this context, we especially hope this reprint will enrich soil hydrology in the desert regions for advancing critical zone science in the Anthropocene.

> **Ying Zhao, Jianguo Zhang, Jianhua Si, Jie Xue, and Zhongju Meng** *Editors*
