desertification- pace university（荒漠化,佩斯大学）（9页）.docVIP

Summary Desertification is the change of land and its vegetation that makes it unable to support life, becoming like a desert. This is a global problem that seems to be expanding out from arid and semi-arid zones of the planet. Desertification is considered a result of human activity that degrades the land beyond recovery. Overgrazing and overfarming combined with clearcutting and other techniques that cause erosion can lead to desertification, though there is some evidence that the dry areas are expanding and contracting based solely on patterns of drought and rainfall. Despite some conflicting evidence, most of the scientific community and the United Nations believe that desertification is an insidious condition that has become more serious during the last years of this century. Remediation is in the hands of the human community, through changes in all aspects of agriculture, including tilling, crop choice, rotation schedules, and livestock grazing. The United Nations and other public and private groups are encouraging nations to make policy changes to address this problem and attempt to reverse it before it is too late. Action plans and greater public participation in environmental issues will serve to handle the problem and hopefully make it a non-issue for future generations. Understanding Desertification Desertification is defined as “the diminution or destruction of the biological potential of the land leading to desert like conditions.” (Whitford 1992) The United Nations at the 1992 Earth Summit expressed the condition as “land degradation in arid, semi-arid and dry sub humid areas resulting from various factors, including climatic variations and human activities. (United Nations I, see Bibliography) Nelson further defines it as a process of sustained land (soil and vegetation) degradation in arid, semi-arid and sub-humid areas, caused at least partly by man. It reduces both resilience and productive potential to an extent which c