Desire for Greener Land

Analysis of SLM technologies
Introduction
For the purpose of this analysis the 30 case studies are clustered
into five groups, which are presented in Table 1.
The five groups are characterised as follows:
1. Cropping management: includes soil fertility management
(benefits of use of organic and inorganic plant
nutrients, minimum disturbance of the soil, crop rotation
and permanent soil cover, including agroforestry systems).
They are applied on cropland and mixed land use
systems (crop-tree and crop-grazing).
2. Water management: includes rain water harvesting,
improved irrigation efficiency and provision of drinking
water for domestic and livestock use. It involves different
land uses, mostly related to crop production through irrigation
and water harvesting but also water supply systems.
There can be combinations of uses for the same technology,
such as provision of irrigation and drinking water.
3. Cross slope barriers: measures on sloping lands in the
form of soil bunds, stone lines, barriers in gullies, vegetative
strips and all forms of terraces. They are applied on
various land uses systems but often related to cropland or
control of gullies.
4. Grazing land management: includes controlled grazing,
resting periods and is only applied on grazing land use
systems
5. Forest management: includes afforestation, assisted
regeneration of forests and fire control. The biogas technology
from Botswana is also assigned to this group, as its
major land degradation related role is to reduce pressure
on forest and wood resources.
The following analysis is often carried out in relation to the
five conservation groups, enabling similarities and differences
to be identified.
Land use
Most technologies are rather specific for a certain land use
type. No tillage, for example, can only relate to cropland.
The introduction of a technology sometimes induces a shift
from one land use (e.g. cropland) to another (e.g. agroforestry).
After the implementation of the SLM practice,
40% of the technologies are applied only on cropland, 7%
on grazing land and only one out of 30 (3%) is applied in
forested land. The other half is applied in mixed systems,
such as cropland and forests (agroforestry) or cropland and
Land use after conservation
1
3%
2
7%
grazing land. After the introduction of the technology the
agroforestry systems increased at the expense of the grazing
land systems.
The area where the technology is applied is in most cases
rather small, often between 10 and 100 km 2 , but in a number
of cases also below 10 ha. WOCAT aims to document the
experience of unique SLM Technologies, which should cover
a homogeneous set of natural (bio-physical) and human
(socio-economic) conditions. Larger areas tend to include
variations in climatic or altitudinal zones, differences in
slope categories or diverse conditions of land tenure.
Degradation
cropland / mixed (agroforestry)
cropland
cropland / grazing land
grazing land
forest / grazing
forest
forest / mixed
DESIRE - WOCAT 2012
Degraded land is defined as land that, due to natural processes
or human activity, is no longer able to properly sustain
an economic function and / or the original ecological function
1 . WOCAT differentiates between six major degradation
types, namely soil erosion by water, soil erosion by wind,
chemical soil deterioration (incl. soil fertility decline), physical
soil deterioration (e.g. compaction), biological degradation
(e.g. reduction of vegetation) and water degradation
(e.g. aridification).
Cropping management technologies are used against all
types of degradation and often address combinations of
these. The other technology groups are more targeted at
fewer degradation types, i.e. water management technologies
mainly address water degradation, cross-slope barriers
are established against soil erosion by water, and grazing
land and forest management technologies mainly address
biological degradation. Surprisingly, soil crusting and sealing
(physical soil deterioration), a phenomena often observed in
40 DESIRE – WOCAT Desire for Greener Land
2
7%
4
13%
3
10%
12
40%
6
20%
Figure1: Study site size and land use types.
Morocco, Abdellah Laouina Turkey, Sanem Açıkalın