Rural farming communities may have a new and unlikely ally in the battle against climate change. Researchers from Princeton university have shown that termite mounds may prevent drylands from turning into deserts by helping the surrounding soil retain water.

According to the United Nations, 41.3% of the the land surface of the Earth is drylands. This includes deserts, semi-desert, grassland and rangeland. These lands support 30 percent of the world’s agricultural crops, half of the world’s livestock and support more than 35 percent of the world’s human population. As climate change causes temperatures to increase and rainfall in some areas to lessen, those croplands are at risk of becoming arid and turning to desert.

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), an agency established by the UN in 1977, states that 12 million hectares per year are being lost to desertification and other forms of degradation and that the livelihoods of one billion people in 100 countries are currently at risk.

In a paper, recently published in the journal Science, Princeton researchers showed that termite mounds store nutrients and moisture, that their internal tunnels allow water to better penetrate the soil and preserve seeds and plant life. Sufficient quantities of termite mounds can hold back the spread of desertification and allow a more rapid return of plant life following a drought.

“The rain is the same everywhere, but because termites allow water to penetrate the soil better, the plants grow on or near the mounds as if there were more rain. The vegetation on and around termite mounds persists longer and declines slower. Even when you get to such harsh conditions where vegetation disappears from the mounds, re-vegetation is still easier. As long as the mounds are there the ecosystem has a better chance to recover,” said Corina Tarnita, a Princeton assistant professor in ecology and evolutionary biology in a statement.

Typically, for grasslands and savannas there are five stages that mark the transition into desert. According to Jef Huisman, an aquatic microbiology professor and theoretical ecologist at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, each of these stages has a distinct pattern of plant growth. Scientists use satellite images to determine which areas are headed toward desertification.

However, according to the researchers, the current system may be too simple. The Princeton team showed that plant-growth patterns happen on a smaller scale than previously thought.

The termite mound pattern of small oasis of strong plant growth bears a strong resemblance to the fifth and final stage of a grassland turning into a desert.

One of these patterns stems from vegetation responding to limited rainfall, and the second from bustling termite mounds preserving and improving the lives of surrounding plants according to Tarinta. The report also cautions however that the two patterns may not be mutually exclusive.

“The coexistence of multiple patterns at these scales makes ecosystems more robust and less prone to collapse, and that is the significance of this study. In that sense, we have to adjust our models for drylands because these ecosystems are much more resistant to desertification than we previously believed,“ said Huisman, who was aware of but not involved in the study.

According to the paper’s co-author Robert Pringle this and other types of ecosystems need to be re-examined to account for the roles of small, usually unnoticed, creatures like ants and prairie dogs.

“This phenomenon and these patterned landscape features are common. It’s not always termites causing them, but they may very well have similar effects on the ecosystem. However, exactly what each type of animal does to the vegetation is hard to know in advance. You’d have to get into a system and determine what is building the mounds and what are the properties of the mounds,” said Pringle.

Tarnita, Pringle and University of Colorado-Boulder professor of environmental studies Dan Doak are currently preparing to continue the research to test theoretical predictions in real world environments.