according to the unccd definition, “desertification” is land degradation in arid, semi-aridand dry sub-humid areas resulting from various factors, including climatic variations andhuman activities. it has been recognized as a major economic, social, and environmentalproblem in many countries of the world. the medalus methodology is a practical approachto assess the present status of desertifica...

Especially over the last 100 years, our unbridled exploitation of the world’s natural resources has severely damaged its vegetation and has also resulted in worrying accumulations of in‐ dustrial wastes and greenhouse gases. Together, these have upset natural ecosystem balances and have created many environment and climatic problems, including rising temperatures, in‐ creasing desertification, ...

By all accounts, the proness of the Merhabete people to recurrent, and sometimes colossal, food shortages has had several interlocking sources, including maladministration, untimely execution of government policies, unsuccessful handling of issues of land reform, environmental bankruptcy and the unprecedented intensity of the "grain drain", resulting from rapid soil erosion, over-cultivation, d...

There has been a recent proliferation of remote sensing-based trend analysis for monitoring regional desertification. These show contradictory results. All of them claim to have been “validated” through expert interpretation, in the absence of sufficient field data. We suggest that such an approach is not sufficiently rigorous. Therefore, we demonstrate an approach which simulates land degradat...