On inclusion of ecosystem services in the assessment of damage from land degradation

2016 ◽  
Vol 49 (12) ◽  
pp. 1443-1449 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. V. Tsvetnov ◽  
O. A. Makarov ◽  
A. S. Yakovlev ◽  
E. V. Bondarenko
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-4
Author(s):  
Gabriel Lopez Porras

Despite international efforts to stop dryland degradation and expansion, current dryland pathways are predicted to result in large-scale migration, growing poverty and famine, and increasing climate change, land degradation, conflicts and water scarcity. Earth system science has played a key role in analysing dryland problems, and has been even incorporated in global assessments such as the ones made by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. However, policies addressing dryland degradation, like the ‘Mexican programme for the promotion of sustainable land management’, do not embrace an Earth system perspective, so they do not consider the complexity and non-linearity that underlie dryland problems. By exploring how this Mexican programme could integrate the Earth system perspective, this paper discusses how ’Earth system’ policies could better address dryland degradation and expansion in the Anthropocene.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohsen Sharafatmandrad ◽  
Azam Khosravi Mashizi

Land degradation usually leads to the loss of ecosystem services, which may threaten social well-being. There is no approach to identify and manage all ecosystem services based on their importance in degradation processes and social systems. This study aimed to link ecosystem services to social well-being in order to assess rangeland degradation. Eleven ecosystem services (forage production, water yield, edible plants, fuel, medicinal plants, pollination, gas regulation, soil resistivity to erosion, soil fertility, scenic beauty, and recreation) were assessed in a semiarid rangeland near Bardsir city, Kerman Province, southeast Iran. There were significant differences between the rangeland types in providing ecosystem services (p < 0.05). Four criteria and 17 indices of social well-being were weighed according to their importance for local stakeholders. Rangeland degradation was estimated using the weight of the indices for social well-being and ecosystem services. Discriminant analysis indicated that supporting services (soil fertility) and provisioning services (water yield and forage production) had the greatest impact on rangeland degradation, which is related to food security in social well-being. Ecosystem services and social well-being declined in medium and severe degradation due to plant composition change and overgrazing based on principal component analysis (PCA). More than 70% of the watershed has been highly and severely degraded. There was a trade-off relationship between ecosystem services and social well-being in very severe degraded areas because of social well-being promotion due to agriculture expansion. Based on our approach, the loss rate of the ecosystem services and social well-being indices in each degradation category is a good guide for management programs and decision-makers to meet both the needs of the people and the preservation of ecosystems.


2016 ◽  
Vol 147 ◽  
pp. 590-600 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Smiraglia ◽  
T. Ceccarelli ◽  
S. Bajocco ◽  
L. Salvati ◽  
L. Perini

Author(s):  
Zhanguo Bai ◽  
David Dent ◽  
Yunjin Wu ◽  
Rogier de Jong

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Begoña de la Fuente ◽  
Mélanie Weynants ◽  
Bastian Bertzky ◽  
Giacomo Delli ◽  
Andrea Mandrici ◽  
...  

AbstractTracking changes in total biomass production or land productivity is an essential part of monitoring land transformations and long-term alterations of the health and productive capacity of land that are typically associated with land degradation. Persistent declines in land productivity impact many terrestrial ecosystem services that form the basis for sustainable livelihoods of human communities. Protected areas (PAs) are a key strategy in global efforts to conserve biodiversity and ecosystem services that are critical for human well-being, and cover about 15% of the land worldwide. Here we globally assess the trends in land productivity in PAs of at least 10 km2 and in their unprotected surroundings (10 km buffers) from 1999 to 2013. We quantify the percentage of the protected and unprotected land that shows stable, increasing or decreasing trends in land productivity, quantified as long-term (15 year) changes in above-ground biomass derived from satellite-based observations with a spatial resolution of 1 km. We find that 44% of the land in PAs globally has retained the productivity at stable levels from 1999 to 2013, compared to 42% of stable productivity in the unprotected land around PAs. Persistent increases in productivity are more common in the unprotected lands around PAs (32%) than within PAs (18%) globally, which may be related to more active management and vegetation cover changes in some of these unprotected lands. About 14% of the protected land and 12% of the unprotected land around PAs has experienced declines in land productivity from 1999 to 2013 globally. Oceania has the highest percentage of land with stable productivity in PAs (57%) followed by Asia (52%). Europe is the continent with the lowest percentage of land with stable productivity levels in PAs (38%) and with the largest share of protected land with increasing land productivity (32%), which may be related to the high population density and share of agricultural land within PAs as well as to rural land abandonment processes in many regions of Europe. In conclusion, we provide a relevant indicator and assessment of land productivity dynamics that contributes to characterise the state, pressures and changes in and around protected areas globally. Further research may focus on more detailed analyses to disentangle the relative contribution of specific drivers (from climate change to land use change) and their interaction with land productivity dynamics and potential land degradation in different regions of the world.


2018 ◽  
Vol 628-629 ◽  
pp. 539-555 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefania Cerretelli ◽  
Laura Poggio ◽  
Alessandro Gimona ◽  
Getahun Yakob ◽  
Shiferaw Boke ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Insa Otte ◽  
Nosiseko Mashiyi ◽  
Pawel Kluter ◽  
Steven Hill ◽  
Andreas Hirner ◽  
...  

<p>Global biodiversity and ecosystem services are under high pressure of human impact. Although avoiding, reducing and reversing the impacts of human activities on ecosystems should be an urgent priority, the loss of biodiversity continues. One of the main drivers of biodiversity loss is land use change and land degradation. In South Africa land degradation has a long history and is of great concern. The SPACES II project SALDi (South African Land Degradation Monitor) aims for developing new, adaptive and sustainable tools for assessing land degradation by addressing the dynamics and functioning of multi-use landscapes with respect to land use change and ecosystem services. SPACES II is a German-South African “Science Partnerships for the Adaptation to Complex Earth System Processes”. Within SALDi ready-to-use earth observation (EO) data cubes are developed. EO data cubes are useful and effective tools using earth observations to deliver decision-ready products. By accessing, storing and processing of remote sensing products and time-series in data cubes, the efficient monitoring of land degradation can therefore be enabled. The SALDi data cubes from optical and radar satellite data include all necessary pre-processing steps and are generated to monitor vegetation dynamics of five years for six focus areas. Intra- and interannual variability in both, a high spatial and temporal resolution will be accounted to monitor land degradation. Therefore, spatial high resolution earth observation data from 2016 to 2021 from Sentinel-1 (C-Band radar) and Sentinel-2 (multispectral) will be integrated in the SALDi data cube for six research areas of 100 x 100 km. Additionally, a number of vegetation indices will be implemented to account for explicit land degradation and vegetation monitoring. Spatially explicit query tools will enable users of the system to focus on specific areas, like hydrological catchments or blocks of fields.</p>


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