**Preface to "Plant Adaptation to Extreme Environments in Drylands"**

Arid and semi-arid lands cover more than one-third of the Earth's terrestrial area and are typically characterized by rainfall scarcity, higher temperatures and evapotranspiration, salinization, nutrient-poor soil, and a paucity of vegetation cover. Climate modelling research projects that the frequency and intensity of extreme environmental events in these regions will become increasingly higher in future climate scenarios. Determining the adaptive strategies and mechanisms of dryland plants to extreme environments such as drought, salinity and heat has become a research hotspot and is of great relevance for utilizing appropriate practices for the conservation and management of dryland vegetation.

We gathered studies on plant–soil relations, water, and carbon and nutrient physiology, as well as species diversity and distribution patterns, in order to deepen the understanding of the adaption of dryland plants to more extensive and frequent environmental stresses under projected climate change. Our Special Issue comprises thirteen original articles that provide a brief overview of the latest research progress, spanning a broad range of aspects related to the adaptation of plants to extreme environments in drylands. We are indebted to all the authors contributing their work to this reprint and to all reviewers whose comments and suggestions helped to improve the quality of the accepted papers.

Despite our best efforts to collect papers that cover as many relevant topics as possible, to provide a comprehensive introduction to the basic knowledge and scientific preamble on the adaptation of plants to environmental stress in arid areas, the papers we collected in this Special Issue represent only a small portion of scientific knowledge in this field. In order to collect and display more advancedknowledge, we have started to collect papers for the new Specific Issue "Plant Adaptation to Extreme Environments in Drylands—Series II" through *Forests*. We hope that readers will contribute high-quality papers to this Special Issue.

> **Xiao-Dong Yang, Nai-Cheng Wu, and Xue-Wei Gong** *Editors*
