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Desertification Jargon Buster

Desertification Jargon Buster
Definitions:

DESERTIFICATION
Process by which areas of desert are created by deforestation of natural forests or the activities of man.
Desertification may be brought on by Global warming.
(Cherrington ’95)

DESERTIFICATION

Is the degradation of land in arid and dry sub-humid areas, resulting primarily from man-made activities and influenced by climatic variations.

(GreenSpec AEP ’09)

DESERTIFICATION
Land degradation in arid, semi-arid, and dry sub-humid areas resulting from various factors, including climatic variations and human activities.
Further, the UNCCD (The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification) defines land degradation as a reduction or loss, in arid, semi-arid, and dry sub-humid areas, of the biological or economic productivity and complexity of rain-fed cropland, irrigated cropland, or range, pasture, forest, and woodlands resulting from land uses or from a process or combination of processes, including processes arising from human activities and habitation patterns, such as:
(i) soil erosion caused by wind and/or water;
(ii) deterioration of the physical, chemical and biological or economic properties of soil; and
(iii) long-term loss of natural vegetation.
Conversion of forest to non-forest.
(UNCCD ’12)

DESERTIFICATION

Desertification is occurring on 2/3 of our planet’s seasonally humidity grassland environment surfaces.
it occurs where the soil is exposed by removal of plants by grazing, erosion or fire to allow soils to be exposed to extremes of temperature (cold at dawn and hot at midday) to affect and damage the soil structure, evaporation of moisture, release of carbon dioxide, and methane and prevention of moisture absorption, prevention of biological breakdown of crop waste before the following season, avoiding oxidation of dead grasses leading to woody growth; to replenish the soil, formation of algae crusts that prevent moisture absorption; affecting the micro-climate but because it affects such large areas of the globe that it affects the macro-climate of the planet.

(GBE BRM ’13)