Desire for Greener Land

Table 2: WOCAT categories of SLM measures
or degraded slopes. It is good to see that the major efforts
of SLM in these dryland sites go into prevention and mitigation.
Examples for prevention include crop rotation systems
(Chile, Morocco), fire prevention in forests, controlled grazing
in forests (Italy), water harvesting systems (Tabia from
Tunisia), and drip irrigation in Turkey.
Conservation measures
WOCAT categorises technologies into specific measures in
order to help understand how they function (see Table 2).
A technology group, as presented in Table 1, may consist
of several such measures. Not surprisingly, the technologies
within a particular group all have similar compositions in
terms of their component measures (see Figure 5).
Structural and agronomic are the most frequent measures
of the 30 cases presented in this chapter. In contrast to the
experiences in other case studies 3 , there are very few combi-
Agronomic measures: measures that improve soil cover (e.g. green cover, mulch);
measures that enhance organic matter / soil fertility (e.g. manuring); soil surface
treatment (e.g. conservation tillage); subsurface treatment (e.g. deep ripping).
Vegetative measures: plantation / reseeding of tree and shrub species (e.g. live
fences; tree crows), grasses and perennial herbaceous plants (e.g. grass strips).
Structural measures: terraces (bench, forward / backward sloping); bunds banks /
level, graded); dams, pans; ditches (level, graded); walls, barriers, palisades.
Management measures: change of land use type (e.g. area enclosure); change of
management / intensity level (e.g. from grazing to cut-and-carry); major change in
timing of activities; control / change of species composition.
nations mentioned. A typical combination is the bench terrace
from Spain, which is combined with a vegetative measure
– drought-resistant shrubs with a good surface cover – to stabilize
the structure.
The analysis for the five groups (Figure 5) shows that for the
cropping management purely agronomic measures were used,
whereas for the grazing land purely management measures
were used, i.e. without additional planting of trees or grasses
and without implementing structures. In the water management
group structural measures were applied in all except
one of the case studies. Cross-slope barriers and forest management
consist of various measures.
Technical function
Figure 6 shows through which technical functions the SLM
technology is combatting land degradation. Combinations of
different functions are very common. One of the most impor-
Morocco, Gudrun Schwilch Portugal, Gudrun Schwilch
42 DESIRE – WOCAT Desire for Greener Land