This document presents proposals for the design and implementation of a Baseline Survey for the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). It has been prepared at the request of the Secretariat of the UNCCD. The Baseline Survey is to be initiated as part of the UNCCD's Ten Year Strategic Plan, and will form the starting point for monitoring long-term trends in desertification so that prog...

Desertification is a serious threat to the ecological environment and social economy in our world and there is a pressing need to develop a reasonable and reproducible method to assess it at different scales. In this paper, the Ordos Plateau in China was selected as the research region and a quantitative method for desertification assessment was developed by using Landsat MSS and TM/ETM+ data o...

Aeolian desertification is poorly understood despite its importance for indicating environment change. Here we exploit Gaofen-1(GF-1) and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data to develop a quick and efficient method for large scale aeolian desertification dynamic monitoring in northern China. This method, which is based on Normalized Difference Desertification Index (NDDI) ...

Integrating remote sensing (RS) with geographic information system (GIS), distribution digital maps of land desertification, spatial database and their statistics in the year of 1986, 1993 and 2000 were obtained by correcting, amplifying and auto classifying the RS images of interlaced zone for agriculture and animal husbandry in northern Shaanxi. The results showed that in the last 15 years de...

Over the past several decades, rocky desertification has led to severe ecological problems in karst areas in South China. After a rocky desertification treatment project was completed, the vegetation coverage changed greatly and, consequently, increased the ecology water consumption (approximately equal to the actual evapotranspiration) of the regional vegetation. Thus, it intensified the regio...

Desertification in Qinghai-Xizang (Tibet) Plateau is part of Chinese desertification. In the past decades, due to the climate warming, the climate condition in Qinghai-Xizang (Tibet) Plateau has been relatively dry. This has resulted in permafrost degradation and other environmental problems. In addition, the vegetation and the soil layer were also destroyed by unreasonable economic activities....

Desertification is the result of complex interactions among various factors, including climate change and human activities. However, previous research generally focused on either meteorological factors associated with climate change or human factors associated with human activities, and lacked quantitative assessments of their interaction combined with long-term monitoring. Thus, the roles of c...

The farming and grazing interlocked transitional zone along the Great Wall in northern Shaanxi Province is particularly vulnerable to desertification due to its fragile ecosystem and intensive human activity. Studies reveal that desertification is both a natural and anthropogenic process. Four desertification indicators (vegetative cover, proportion of drifting sand area, desertification rate, ...

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...