Exploring the Future of Global Drylands: Professor Changjia Li’s YESI Fellowship
Posted on Wednesday 29 October 2025
In July and August 2021, Christopher Lyon hosted YESI international Fellow Professor Changjia Li, a geographer at Beijing Normal University in China, at the Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity. Li, who was promoted to professor, just before arriving in York, is a very highly regarded expert in his field, who previously completed his PhD at the University of Leeds.
Professor Li came to York as a YESI International Fellow exploring Critical Long-Term Thresholds in Global Dryland Social-Ecological Systems. Working with Lyon and others, he explored methods to assess carrying capacity thresholds for fast and slow changes in dryland ecosystems to 2500. Drylands are almost half of the Earth’s surface, 40% of its population, and 90% in developing countries. They are impacted by and expanding under climate change, with profound effects and people and ecosystems. Understanding the dimensions of change to dryland systems, especially into the near and distant future, is critical for effective and just adaptation and development planning.
His visiting fellowship at LCAB was very fruitful and seeded insights and potential future collaborations on dryland exploration, integration of the SDGs, and a potential visit to China in 2026. Of particular note, Lyon’s work on long-term multi-century projections of change and its impacts on ecosystems, provided complementary insights for exploring these changes in dryland ecosystems.
During his stay, Professor Li gave a highly informative and well-attended seminar on his research on dryland social-ecological systems in a changing environment.
Professor Li’s visit overlapped with Dr Guoen Wei, associate professor at Nanchang University, who is visiting LCAB on a year-long China Council Scholarship. Dr Wei’s research on SDG trade-offs and synergies led to fruitful discussions between Lyon, Wei, and Li about how these might reveal new applications of their respective approaches.
Dr Lyon and Professor Li look forward to future work together.