This Special Feature Issue has its origins in a series of presentations held at
the Ecological Society of America conference in August 2012, which included
contributions from theorists, modelers, and field scientists, and again, this
diversity is reflected in the collection. The goal of this collection is to identify the general features that lead to drought-induced mortality in a wide variety of plant species and ecosystems across the world, leading to a rapid advancement of our understanding of widespread plant mortality.