Land Degradation

• A process in which the value of the biophysical environment is affected

by a combination of human-induced processes acting upon the land
• Natural hazards are excluded as a cause
• United Nations estimate that about 30% of land is degraded worldwide,
and about 3.2 billion people reside in these degrading areas
• About 12 million hectares of productive land – which roughly equals the
size of Greece – is degraded every year.
 Land Degradation-Causes
Agricultural use, deforestation and
climate change:
• Land clearance, such as clearcutting and
deforestation
• Agricultural depletion of soil nutrients through
poor farming practices
• Livestock including overgrazing and over
drafting
• Inappropriate irrigation and over drafting
• Urban sprawl and commercial development
• Vehicle off-roading
• Biological invasions
 Land Degradation-
Causes and Distribution
 Land Degradation-
Causes and Distribution
Land Degradation in China
Land Degradation in China
 Land Degradation-Consequences
• Decline in the productive capacity of the land.
• Loss of land's capacity to provide resources for human livelihoods
• Loss of biodiversity
• Shifting ecological risk
 Desertification
• A type of land degradation in drylands in which biological productivity
is lost due to natural processes or induced by human activities whereby
fertile areas become increasingly inarable.
 Desertification/Land Degradation
• Desertification: Considerable controversy exists
• A type of land degradation
• A significant global ecological and environmental
problem
• UNCCD: land degradation in arid, semi-arid and dry
sub-humid regions resulting from various factors,
including climatic variations and human activities
• Causes: loss of vegetation, driven by drought, climatic
shifts, overgrazing, deforestation etc.

9
10
 Where/What are the drylands/deserts?

Desert is defined as any place where the

aridity index (AI) > 4
potential evaporation
AI =
available moisture
11
 "Horse latitude"
deserts are created
by descending cold,
dry air masses.

12
Orographic deserts
Existing on the
downwind sides of
major mountains
ranges.

13
This is the origin of the great Basin and Range deserts of the American West.

14
The intermountain valley
in Ecuador is also
extremely arid.

15
Polar Deserts

In Antarctica, outlet glaciers

from the ice sheets flow into
the polar deserts of the Dry
Valleys.

16
17
Interior Asian deserts exist due to extreme distances from moisture
sources, compounded by jet stream diversion and orographic
blockage of southern monsoons by the Himalaya.

18
Global Distribution of Drylands

Area (×106 km2) % P/PET ratio

World (UNEP 1992)
Arid 15.6 12.1 0.05-0.20
Semiarid 23.0 17.7 0.20-0.45
USA (Le Houeou, 1992)
Arid 0.46 4.8 0.06-0.30
Semiarid 1.68 17.9 0.30-0.50
Global Distribution of Desertification
 Global Drylands : Critical Concerns
• Food security: 2 billion of
world population
• Climate change-
increasing aridity
• Land use/land cover
change
• Energy exploration and
development
• Land degradation,
woody plant
encroachment
Woody Plant Encroachment:
Global Occurrence
Black grama
grassland

Degree of encroachment/State transitions

Pre-encroachment (I)
Shrubby grassland

Early (II)
Shrubland

Middle (III)
Shrub duneland

Late (IV)
 Woody Plant Encroachment:
Drivers and Feedbacks
• Exogenic drivers
• Regional and global warming
• Overgrazing
• Increase in atmospheric CO2
• Large-scale fire suppression

• Endogenic feedbacks
• Fire-vegetation
• Soil erosion-vegetation
• Vegetation-microclimate

(D’Odorico et al. 2012)

 Management/Countermeasures
• Reforestation: plant trees or other
plants to prevent desertification
 The Green Wall of China
• Proposed in the late 1970s
• Has become a major ecological
engineering project that is not
predicted to end until the year
2055
• 66 billion trees planted
• Decreased desert land in China
by an annual average of 1,980
square km
• Frequency of sandstorms
nationwide have fallen 20%
• A successful story
 The Green Wall of Africa
• Started in 2007
• Combat desertification in 20 countries
• 8,000 km wide, stretching across the entire width of the continent
• Restored 36 million hectares of land
• By 2030 the initiative plans to restore a total of 100 million hectares
 Management/Countermeasures
• Soil restoration: via
provisioning of water and/or
fixation of soil
• Windbreaks, contour trenching,
use of nitrogen-rich fertilizer
 Management/Countermeasures
• Managed grazing: grazing can serve as tool to reverse desertification
• Overgrazing/mismanaged grazing is the cause of desertification

Land on the left is managed under Holistic Planned Grazing, showing a

contrast with advancing desertification on the right