Land degradation dynamic assessment is very important to understand the effectiveness of ecological engineering and provide decision support for future restorations. Taking the Beijing–Tianjin dust and sandstorm source region (BTSSR) as the study area, the land degradation dynamic in the first decade of twenty-first century is assessed by utilizing the time series trends of net primary production (NPP) and modified rain use efficiency (RUE), respectively, and their sensitivities and performances are evaluated through the validation.

Human activities as well as natural events can dramatically affect land degradation negatively or positively. In Egypt, agriculture is a key sector of the economy. Land reclamation seeks to transfer desert areas to agricultural land and support the construction of new villages. The agricultural productivity improvement of these Newlands is slow and requires considerable time due to their fragility and sensitivity to desertification.

We suggest a classificatory approach for land cover analysis that integrates fuzzy set theory with permutation techniques. It represents a non parametric alternative and/or a complement of traditional multivariate statistics when data are scarce, missing, burdened with high degree of uncertainty and originated from different sources and/or times. According to this approach, the Operational Geographic Units (OGUs) in which landscape is subdivided and sampled are classified with hierarchical clustering methods.

The island of Sri Lanka is free from serious natural hazards such as volcanic activity and earthquakes resulting from climatic extremes, but there are impacts of many natural disasters, such as landslides, floods and droughts, the intensity and frequency of which are increasing due to human interventions. Some areas of Sri Lanka are also periodically subject to cyclones that occur due to climatic conditions and geographical locations.Land degradation denotes all natural or anthropogenic processes that diminish or impair productivity of land.

Demands are increasing for scientific research to be explicitly and demonstrably policy relevant. Research funders are requiring greater returns on their investments and scientists are expected to demonstrate clearly how their research can inform policy and regulation to deliver positive consequences for societal, economic and environmental wellbeing.

Runoff is the key factor to understand the land degradation causing high risk of soil erosion and can reduce the water available for human societies and ecosystems. The dynamics of runoff and suspended sediment transport are not completely understood. In this study, we examined the trends, breaking point and regime changes for the runoff and sediment load at different temporal scales using 50 years of continuous observational data from a highly erodible sub‐catchment with an area of 7,325 km² in the Beiluo River basin on the Loess Plateau, China.

Desert rangelands are characterised by low and highly variable rainfall regime, low forage production and high heterogeneity in the distribution of natural resources. This study was carried out in the desert rangelands of Tunisia to evaluate the response of different rangelands to annual rainfall in terms of aboveground net primary production (ANPP) and rain use efficiency over a 10‐year period (2003–2012). In general, ANPP values were relatively low (123 kg DM ha⁻¹ y⁻¹) but would tend to increase with increasing annual rainfall for all rangeland types.

Understanding pasture degradation processes is the key for sustainable land management in the tropical mountain rainforest region of the South Ecuadorian Andes. We estimated the stocks of total carbon and nutrients, microbial biomass and different P fractions along a gradient of land-uses that is typical of the eastern escarpment of the Cordillera Real i.e., old-growth evergreen lower montane forest, active pastures (17 and 50 years-old), abandoned pastures 10 and 20 years old with bracken fern or successional vegetation.

Mediterranean croplands are seasonally dry agroecosystems with low soil organic carbon (SOC) content and high risk of land degradation and desertification. The increase in SOC is of special interest in these systems, as it can help to build resilience for climate change adaptation while contributing to mitigate global warming through the sequestration of atmospheric carbon (C). We compared SOC change and C sequestration under a number of recommended management practices (RMPs) with neighboring conventional plots under Mediterranean climate (174 data sets from 79 references).

Understanding historical and present gully development is essential when addressing the causes and consequences of land degradation, especially in vulnerable dryland environments. For Northern Ethiopia, several studies exist on the severity of gully erosion, yet few have quantified gully development. In this study, gully network and volume development were quantified over the period 1963–2010 for an area of 123km², representing the regional variability in environmental characteristics. Gully networks were mapped from small-scale aerial photographs and high-resolution satellite images.

In Tigray, Ethiopia, land degradation is a dominant environmental problem and hence the regional government has undertaken restoration measures on degraded soils since 1991. The present study was aimed to assess the impact of land uses and soil management practices on soil properties, and consequently on soil quality of degraded soils. The catchments selected were Maileba and Gum Selassa, and land uses included cultivated (CL), grazing (GL), plantation (PA) and area exclosure (AE). Replicated soil samples were collected from topsoil and profiles of four land-use types in both catchments.