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...

Desertification is a serious global environmental problem that affects many people directly in countries with semi-arid or arid climates. The causes of desertification are diverse and complicated, ranging from international economic activities to unsustainable land use practices of local communities. The consequence of desertification reduces the ability of the land to support life and decrease...

Desertification is a typical disaster risk event in which human settlements and living environments are destroyed. Desertification Disaster Risk Assessment can control and prevent the occurrence and development of desertification disasters and reduce their adverse influence on human society. This study presents the methodology and procedure for risk assessment and zoning of desertification disa...

Regime shifts are abrupt transitions between alternate ecosystem states including desertification in arid regions due to drought or overgrazing. Regime shifts may be preceded by statistical anomalies such as increased autocorrelation, indicating declining resilience and warning of an impending shift. Tests for conditional heteroskedasticity, a type of clustered variance, have proven powerful le...

Drylands throughout the world have always undergone periods of degradation due to naturally-occurring fluctuations in climate. However, over the past century, the human population in drylands has grown exponentially and the resulting pressures on the landscape have exacerbated various desertification processes, particularly in Africa. The degradation of drylands has led to changes in local, reg...

In northern China, the recent eco-environment protective policies played a very important role in the ecological environment protection and rehabilitation. To better understand the quantitative effect of the prohibiting grazing policy on grassland desertification reversal process, in this paper, Yanchi County was selected as a case study to conduct a quantitative research on the effect of prohi...

Abstract Desertification is one of the fundamental problems that threaten many arid and semi-arid areas. The formulation of the United Nation Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), adopted in Paris, 1994 and ratified in 1996, with the active participation of Egypt, gave emphasis on combating the major threats to sustainability of dry lands. Recently, different models were developed to fo...

Desertification is a serious threat to the sustainability of the environment and to human habitation. Kerqin sandy land is the largest sandy land in China, and is one of the most important origins of sandstorms in Northern China. Land desertification and frequent sandstorms in the spring strongly affect the growth of grassland vegetation and crops, and the effective of eco-environment in this r...

In this paper, the spatial distribution of stony desertification characteristics and its influencing factors in Karst areas in different sampling scales are studied using a grid sampling method based on geographic information system (GIS) technology and geo-statistics, with the rock bareness rate obtained through sampling with 150m × 150m grids in the Houzhai River Basin being taken as the orig...

Degradation of semi-arid and arid ecosystems due to desertification is arguably one of the main obstacles for sustainability in those regions. In recent decades, the Mu Us Desert in China has experienced such ecological degradation making quantification of spatial patterns of desertification in this area an important research topic. We analyzed desertification dynamics for seven periods from 19...