Degraded territory is land which has been damaged by either industrial and other activities or no activities at all to the stage where any economic activity is impossible unless special renewable measures are implemented. One of the aims of sustainable environment resolutions adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 25 September, 2015 was ‘to restore degraded land and to aim to achieve having a world neutral to land degradation’. This is the first worldwide document where universal and comprehensive actions regarding land degradation are provided.

limatic and hydrological changes will likely be intensified in the Upper Blue Nile (UBN) basin by the effects of global warming. The extent of such effects for representative concentration pathways (RCP) climate scenarios is unknown. We evaluated projected changes in rainfall and evapotranspiration and related impacts on water availability in the UBN under the RCP4.5 scenario. We used dynamically downscaled outputs from six global circulation models (GCMs) with unprecedented spatial resolution for the UBN.

Soil erosion is a very critical form of land degradation resulting in the loss of soil nutrients and downstream sedimentation of water storages in the highlands of Ethiopia. As it is technically and financially impossible to conserve all landscapes affected by erosion, identification of priority areas of intervention is necessary. Spatially distributed erosion models can help map landscape susceptibility to erosion and identify high erosion risk areas.

Study region : In this study, 33 catchments across the Lower Mekong Basin in Southeast Asia are examined to detect historical changes in their hydrological response via a model-based methodology.Study focus : Intensive development over the past half century across Southeast Asia’s Lower Mekong Basin has inevitably affected natural resources. Large areas have been converted from forests for subsistence and commercial agriculture, and urban development. We implement an innovative approach to screen hydrologic data for detecting impacts of such large-scale changes on hydrological response.

Socio-economic development, public safety of local communities and environmental protection are the major pillars of the concept of sustainable development of rural areas in Europe. Land consolidation is a complex and time-consuming undertaking, which requires high expenditures, yet it plays an important role in the policy of sustainable and multi-functional development. The rapid climate change observed in recent years, resulting in a number of unusual weather conditions, has also had an effect on the directions of land consolidation development.

It is widely known that ecological and socioeconomic functions of the land are the basis for social and economic well-being. Despite this fact, land is still a relatively neglected natural resource, which can be concluded by analyzing the pressures on the land and the lack of systematic monitoring, which involves considering the situation and defining the program for its protection.

The aim of the paper is to explore the possibilities of detection and reduction of land degradation in Smarde municipality rural territory (56°57′18″ N; 23°20′17″ E). To carry out land degradation prevention measures, initially the territories of degraded land should be determined. This paper highlights the field inspection method. For territory inspection a model was used that gave the opportunity to identify degradation types with their characteristic features and possibilities to reduce the land degradation.

The article presents the analysis of the current situation of the damaged land in Klaipeda County. The study found that the number of affected areas in the county – 266. Because the damaged areas consist of mineral quarries and territories occupied by dumps, the article contains the description and condition of these areas. It was found that mostly sand deposits (60) predominate in Klaipeda County, of which only 8 are used. The smallest number of the deposits – the salt deposits (2). The mainly used deposits in the county are sand and gravel deposits – 29, unused – sand deposits (52).

One of the goals of a sustainable environment adopted in the United Nations General Assembly resolution (September 25, 2015) was «to restore degraded lands and strive to achieve a world neutral to land degradation». The problem was identified at the international and European level, but it is also a very pressing problem in Latvia. With regard to the risks of land degradation and their prevention in Latvia, the Law «On Land Management» came into force on January 1, 2015.

The main idea of the project on the cross-border cooperation of Latvia, Lithuania and Belarus, as well as a unified methodology for its implementation, is based on cooperation between local and regional authorities and the use of innovative technologies: current remote sensing data (space images, aerial photographs and images from unmanned aerial vehicles), land information system, GIS and WEB-technologies.

The article considers the role and importance of the borderline position of the Belarusian-Lithuanian region, which influences the transformation processes of territorial structures. Particular attention is paid to the areas of coordinated activities on the formation and functioning of transboundary protected natural areas, as well as spatial planning activities for the sustainable use of their constituent natural complexes. The resulted results of researches are received within the limits of realization in 2014-2015.

With current rates of land degradation reaching ten to twelve million ha per year, there is an urgent need to scale up and out successful, profitable and resource-efficient sustainable land management practices to maintain the health and resilience of the land that humans depend on. As much as 500 million out of two billion ha of degraded land, mainly in developing countries, have restoration potential, offering an immediate target for restoration and rehabilitation initiatives.1 In the past, piecemeal approaches to achieving sustainable land management have had limited impact.