Background and Research Approach: Drylands cover nearly 40 % of Earth’s land surface and contribute substantially to global carbon storage and primary productivity, yet they are among the systems most exposed to land-use change, fragmentation and fire. Across South America, the Argentine Dry Chaco and the Mediterranean dry forests of central Chile exemplify the “functional paradox of drylands”: despite low water availability, they sustain unexpectedly high functional diversity while facing accelerating deforestation and aridification. Building on my PhD work on functional traits, biomass estimation and edge effects in the Dry Chaco, this STSM was designed to establish a comparative, trait-based research network across South American drylands, aligning data and protocols between the Argentine and Chilean partners.

Role of the Short-Term Specific Mission: The mission funded two one-week, in-person seminar and synthesis sprints, each combining invited talks with structured discussion forums: at Universidad Mayor (Santiago de Chile) with Dr. Dylan Craven, and at the University of Buenos Aires with Dr. Sebastián Torrella. Dr. Rodrigo San Martín (Paris-Saclay University) contributed virtually. The mission was timed around my presentation at the IUFRO conference in Coyhaique, Chilean Patagonia, making optimal use of the transatlantic travel financed by the DAAD as part of my PhD scholarship. The STSM funding covered the additional in-country travel and accommodation that the scholarship cannot support, and without which the in-person sprints would not have been possible.

Scientific Exchange and Integration: The workshops surfaced socio-ecological parallels between the two systems. Both are shaped by progressive aridification and by commodity-export economies that drive deforestation and fire: soybean expansion in Argentina and the spread of avocado and orchards in Chile. This shared context provides a strong basis for comparative resilience science. The partners converged on a roadmap for data interoperability: harmonising functional traits (following the AusTraits standard and trait ontologies); harmonising taxonomy following Kew Gardens; and assembling a shared, herbarium-vouchered trait compilation. Discussions in Santiago, enriched by colleagues including Dr. Javier Lopatin, produced a concrete analytical workflow: reconstructing climatic stability since the Last Glacial Maximum to test trait convergence and disentangle evolutionary from climatic signals; linking functional diversity to biomass and to NDVI time series; using flowering phenology as a proxy for gross primary productivity; and contrasting acquisitive resource-use strategies with response traits to disturbance. The Buenos Aires sprint focused on standardisation with herbarium material and on projecting functional space under future climate scenarios.

Organization, Framework Conditions, and Outlook:: Both workshops were hosted at partner institutions and structured as talks plus discussion forums, which proved highly effective for rapid co-design. The Eva Mayr-Stihl Stiftung funding enabled the in-country travel and accommodation. The mission seeded a durable, transnational collaboration to be continued through online meetings. Next steps include a shared, version-controlled analytical workflow and a joint manuscript on convergent and context-dependent functional strategies in South American dry forests. The network strengthens the University of Göttingen’s landscape-resilience agenda and advances FAIR data sharing, with clear relevance for biodiversity conservation and fire-smart management.

Outcome: The direct outcomes of this STSM include a pipeline for cross-site trait analysis, a blueprint for combining remote sensing with functional ecology, and a unified research network.

1. Establishment of the South American Dryland Resilience Forum: Successfully uniting leading researchers from Argentina, Chile, France, and Germany into a long-term, structured collaborative network.
2. Unifying Methodological Pipelines: Addressing data fragmentation by agreeing a standardization protocol using the AusTraits framework and Kew Gardens taxonomy for dryland comparison.
3. Identification of parallels between the two systems establishing the conceptual foundation for comparative dryland-resilience science. ecosystems but has also deeply strengthened the University of Göttingen's international landscape resilience agenda.” Axel Gualdoni-Becerra.