There is potential for synergy between the global environmental conventions on climate change, biodiversity and desertification: changes in land management and land use undertaken to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions can simultaneously deliver positive outcomes for conservation of biodiversity, and mitigation of desertification and land degradation. However, while there can be complementariti...

Desertification, one of the most severe types of land degradation in the world, is of great importance because it is occurring, to some degree, on approximately 40% of the global land area and is affecting more than 1 billion people. In this study, we used a space-for-time method to quantify the impact of five different desertification regimes (potential (PD), light (LD), moderate (MD), severe ...

a r t i c l e i n f o Land degradation in drylands is one of the major environmental issues of the 21st century particularly due to its impact on world food security and environmental quality. Climate change, shifts in vegetation composition, accelerated soil erosion processes, and disturbances have rendered these landscapes susceptible to rapid degradation that has important feedbacks on regio...

Vegetation dynamics are an important topic in the field of global environment change, which is of great significance to monitor temporal–spatial variability of desertification at regional or global scales. Following the reported desertification reversion in the late 1990s in the Horqin Sandy Land, an issue was concerned for desertification control by decreased water availability. To detect the ...

Desertification is a major human tragedy, affecting the daily lives of about 1 billion people. It is this aspect of desertification that deserves further consideration. As a humanitarian effort it is an opportunity, and an obligation, for the industrialized nations to transfer financial support and technical assistance to those countries worst affected by land degradation in all its forms. Dese...

More than one-third of the earth is characterized by arid and semi-arid climate and desertification phenomenon in these areas has been intensified in recent decades. This study aims to investigate the trend of desertification using vegetation indices and Iranian Model of Desertification Potential Assessment (IMDPA) in Abarkooh Plain, Yazd province, Iran. The satellite images (Landsat images in ...

Land degradation, or desertification, is specific to arid, semi-arid, and dry sub-humid regions. The rate of thisphenomenon is high in developing countries such as Iran. This research investigated desertification and mapping ofdesertification in Abuzaydabad, near Kashan, Iran, with an emphasis on land criteria using an IMDPA model.Different studies have assessed land degradation or desertificat...

The main goal of this work was to identify the areas that are most susceptible to desertification in a part of the Algerian steppe, and to quantitatively assess the key factors that contribute to this desertification. In total, 139 desertified zones were mapped using field surveys and photo-interpretation. We selected 16 spectral and geomorphic predictive factors, which a priori play a signific...