Desire for Greener Land

Rate of degradation per study site
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Botswana
Cape Verde
Chile
China
Greece/Crete
Greece/Nestos
Italy
Mexico
Morocco
Portugal/Gois
Portugal/Maçao
Russia/Dzhanibek
DESIRE - WOCAT 2012
30 DESIRE – WOCAT Desire for Greener Land
Russioa/Novy
Spain
Tunisia
Turkey/Karapinar
Turkey/Eskisehir
Figure 7: Relative (areal) extent of the rate of degradation per study site. 3: rapidly increasing degradation, 2:
moderately increasing degradation, 1: slowly increasing degradation, 0: no change in degradation, 1: slowly
decreasing degradation, 2: moderately decreasing degradation, -3: rapidly decreasing degradation.
(both sites) and Greece (Crete site) (Figure 7). These sites
exhibit moderate to strong land degradation. Degradation
is increasing predominantly in mixed land use (45% of the
land with increasing degradation), followed by cultivated
land (31%) and grazing land (24%). For some sites slowly
decreasing degradation was reported (China and Portugal
(Mação)) as a result of SLM efforts already in place. This is
confirmed by the mean effectiveness of conservation measures
reported for these sites.
Direct causes of degradation
Various human activities and natural causes may lead to land
degradation. The emphasis in the degradation assessment is
on human-induced degradation, but sometimes degradation
due to natural causes also requires measures to be taken.
Natural causes include, for example, droughts, topography
or flash floods, although these in turn may be influenced
by human activities, as explained for the indirect causes in
chapter 1.4.4.
Figure 8 shows that inappropriate soil management is by far
the most common cause of land degradation. It is responsible
for about half of the degraded area in the DESIRE study
sites. Inappropriate soil management includes, for example,
Rate
3
Relative distribution of direct causes of degradation
2
1
0
-1
-2
-3
Soil management
Natural causes
Overgrazing
Deforestation and
removal of natural
vegetation
Crop and rangeland
management
Over - exploitation
of vegetation for
domestic use
Others
DESIRE - WOCAT 2012
Figure 8: Relative distribution of direct causes of land degradation
in the DESIRE study sites, expressed in the share of
the degraded area.
China, Hanspeter Liniger Turkey, Sanem Açıkalın