Desire for Greener Land

Figure 16: Effectiveness of conservation measures and extent of land degradation in the Goís study site, Portugal. Source:
research teams of the Goís study site from ESAC and the University of Aveiro.
with other conservation measures, such as grass on the risers
for stabilisation and fodder (a vegetative measure), or contour
ploughing (an agronomic measure).
The categories of conservation measures applied vary
between the major land use types (Figure 17). In cultivated
land, all categories are found, but in forest, agronomic
and vegetative measures dominate. Management measures
are most applied in mixed land use and grazing land.
Combinations of conservation measures occur in all land use
types, and take up the largest absolute area in cultivated
land. Structural measures are relatively most applied in
settlements, since this type of measure is most suitable to
control the large runoff volumes generated in built-up area.
Figure 18 shows that in the DESIRE study sites, agronomic
measures are the most widespread. However, combinations
of two or more measures were reported for about 40%
of the mapping units or approximately 20% of the area
under conservation. Sites with single conservation measures
appeared to have a relatively low effectiveness of conservation.
This confirms that combinations of conservation measures
are more effective than single measures, as is often
reported in the literature 11 .
Morocco, Gudrun Schwilch Tunisia, Cyprien Hauser
36 DESIRE – WOCAT Desire for Greener Land