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The objective of the Land Degradation Assessment in Drylands (LADA) project was to develop tools and methods to assess and quantify the nature, extent, severity and impacts of land degradation on dryland ecosystems, watersheds and river basins, carbon storage and biological diversity at a range of spatial and temporal scales. This builds the national, regional and international capacity to
analyze, design, plan and implement interventions to mitigate land degradation and establish sustainable land use and management practices. To achieve this objective, LADA has developed standardized and improved
methods for dryland degradation assessment, with guidelines for their implementation at a range of spatial and / or temporal scales. The LADA methods enable users to assess the regional and global baseline land degradation situation
with the view to highlighting the areas at greatest risk. These assessments were supplemented by detailed local assessments that focused on the root causes of
land degradation and on local (traditional and adapted) technologies for the mitigation of land degradation. Areas where land degradation is well controlled were included in the analysis in order to develop ‘best practice’ guidelines and the results widely disseminated in various media. The project was intended to make an innovative generic contribution to methodologies and monitoring systems
for land degradation, supplemented by empirically-derived lessons from the six main partner countries involved in Phase 1 of the project (Argentina, China, Cuba, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia) for up-scaling to countries within their regional remit.
