Global desertification: building a science for dryland development.

نویسندگان

  • James F Reynolds
  • D Mark Stafford Smith
  • Eric F Lambin
  • B L Turner
  • Michael Mortimore
  • Simon P J Batterbury
  • Thomas E Downing
  • Hadi Dowlatabadi
  • Roberto J Fernández
  • Jeffrey E Herrick
  • Elisabeth Huber-Sannwald
  • Hong Jiang
  • Rik Leemans
  • Tim Lynam
  • Fernando T Maestre
  • Miguel Ayarza
  • Brian Walker
چکیده

In this millennium, global drylands face a myriad of problems that present tough research, management, and policy challenges. Recent advances in dryland development, however, together with the integrative approaches of global change and sustainability science, suggest that concerns about land degradation, poverty, safeguarding biodiversity, and protecting the culture of 2.5 billion people can be confronted with renewed optimism. We review recent lessons about the functioning of dryland ecosystems and the livelihood systems of their human residents and introduce a new synthetic framework, the Drylands Development Paradigm (DDP). The DDP, supported by a growing and well-documented set of tools for policy and management action, helps navigate the inherent complexity of desertification and dryland development, identifying and synthesizing those factors important to research, management, and policy communities.

برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

منابع مشابه

Scientific Concepts for an Integrated Analysis of Desertification

The Global Drylands Observing System proposed in this issue should reduce the huge uncertainty about the extent of desertification and the rate at which it is changing, and provide valuable information to scientists, planners and policy-makers. However, it needs careful design if information outputs are to be scientifically credible and salient to the needs of people living in dry areas. Its de...

متن کامل

Desertification, Drought, Poverty and Agriculture: Research Lessons and Opportunities

ICARDA and ICRISAT are nonproft international agricultural research centers supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). They focus on sustainable agricultural development for the dryland poor. They also convene a global, multi-institutional partnership known as the Desertification, Drought, Poverty and Agriculture Consortium (DDPA) to provide research con...

متن کامل

Desertification by front propagation?

Understanding how desertification takes place in different ecosystems is an important step in attempting to forecast and prevent such transitions. Dryland ecosystems often exhibit patchy vegetation, which has been shown to be an important factor on the possible regime shifts that occur in arid regions in several model studies. In particular, both gradual shifts that occur by front propagation, ...

متن کامل

Dryland ecohydrology and climate change: critical issues and technical advances

Drylands cover about 40 % of the terrestrial land surface and account for approximately 40 % of global net primary productivity. Water is fundamental to the biophysical processes that sustain ecosystem function and food production, particularly in drylands where a tight coupling exists between ecosystem productivity, surface energy balance, biogeochemical cycles, and water resource availability...

متن کامل

Is the patch size distribution of vegetation a suitable indicator of desertification processes? Comment.

The monitoring of desertification processes, and particularly the development of "early-warning" systems, is an increasingly important development in the management of drylands. It has been shown that the patch size distribution of dryland vegetation can be described using power laws and that deviations from such patterns may be used as an early-warning signal for the onset of desertification. ...

متن کامل

ذخیره در منابع من


  با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید

برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

عنوان ژورنال:
  • Science

دوره 316 5826  شماره 

صفحات  -

تاریخ انتشار 2007