desertification example

"Desertification." If the nutrient-rich top soil blows or washes away, plants may not be able to return. Lists. Link to the video about the Loess plateau: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK8JNXHcBMA&feature=youtu.be Though of course there was also a fair bit of admixture as well. Found inside – Page 3DESERTIFICATION IN EUROPE 2 A Critical Comment ulith Examples From Mediterranean Europe H. G. MENSCHING Chairman of the IGU Jorking Group Resource Management in Drylands University of Hamburg, F. R. G. Summary A seminar on ... Point 2 Mass migration hits the nail on the head. Effects include land degradation, soil erosion and sterility, and a loss of biodiversity, with huge economic costs for nations where deserts are growing. The G77 did promote desertification as a critical issue in the United Nations, spearheading the Convention to Combat Desertification. At its peak it was home to over 5 million people (spread out over 1,056 known cities and settlements), based on best estimates — putting it on scale with a large metropolitan center of our time. The vegetation index, “narrows the places to look for desertification,” says Prince, and that is a vast improvement over “pin pricks in a map.”, Rainfall records compared to satellite vegetation measurements since 1981 show reduced rainfall and vegetation cover during the severe droughts in the Sahel during the 1980s (blue line). to manage water supplies in the desert environment. And on the pedestal these words appear: For those that don’t know, “Völkerwanderung” — meaning literally “migration of peoples” — refers to the mass migrations of Germanic peoples into and throughout Europe (and elsewhere) in the twilight years of the Roman Empire. These, now barren, unprotected dry-surfaces result in the washing and blowing away of the top — and most fertile — layers of soil. By 2000, rain had returned to just below average and stayed at that relatively high level through 2006. Carthage. The lone and level sands stretch far away.”, Tags: Afri tribe, Agriculture, Carthage, Crete, deflation, deforestation, Desertification, desertification causes, desertification civilizational collapse, desertification deforestation, desertification effects, desertification examples, Egypt, Extinction, famine, Greek Dark Ages, Harappan civilization, Horqin Sandy Land China, Indus Valley civilization, late Bronze Age Collapse, Lesvos Greece, Mycenaean palatial civilization, Overgrazing, Ozymandias, Roman Empire, Sea Peoples, Soil erosion, Völkerwanderung, Absolutely fantastic website, will continue to use this for my GSCE and hopefully A-levels! ­The Dust Bowl is a perfect example of desertification, the degradation of dryland ecosystems through a combination of natural and human causes.Droughts are an unavoidable occurrence in semi-arid regions like the Western United States, large portions of sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and Latin America. Drivers of desertification. From Spain to Palestine there are no forests left on the Mediterranean littoral, the region is pronouncedly arid instead of having the mild humid character of forest-clad land, and most of its former bounteously rich top-soil is (now) lying at the bottom of the sea.”. Often little or no data are available to indicate the previous state of the ecosystem or the rate of degradation. A good example of this reality are the “Sea Peoples” of the late Bronze Age. Kassem. Desertification definition: Desertification is the process by which a piece of land becomes dry , empty , and... | Meaning, pronunciation, translations and examples going a process of desertification that may have ex-acerbated or even caused the drought and at least enhanced its impact. Values change, and many things are simply forgotten — especially when you’re hungry and at war with foreign mercenaries (turned immigrants/rulers) brought in by one of the feuding warlords of an earlier time (see: Vortigern and the Saxons), no doubt. Desertification is an ecological degradation process that occurs in soils. I found the section on the Late Bronze Age collapse of civilisation in the eastern Mediterranean almost eerily predictive of current events. Learn more. – Abandonment of the land following the takeover by non-palatable thorny plants arrests further soil-loss. On a much larger scale, a "Green Wall," which will eventually stretch more than 5,700 kilometers in length, much longer than the famous Great Wall, is being planted in northeastern China to protect "sandy lands"--deserts believed to have been created by human activity. Desertification is the conversion of habitable and fertile land to uninhabitable desert. One of the very recent examples of climate-induced desertification is the disappearance of the lake Poopó, lying in a high altitude of semi-arid plains in Bolivian Andes. The presence of a nearby desert has no direct relationship to desertification. Poverty and famine encourages poor land-use practices, overgrazing, and short term food production at the cost of long-term production. Once reforested, though, the new forests still lack the great biodiversity that the old growth forests once possessed, and this doesn’t return. Wikramanayake, N.D. Burgess, G.V.N. The Book to read is DIRT by David Montgomery. For example, the people of Africa are combating severe desertification by planting a nearly 5,000-mile-long wall of vegetation across Africa’s Sahel region. From 1990 until 2004 rainfall returned to levels slightly below the 1898–1993 average, but year-to-year variability was high. Rather, it is the permanent degradation of previously fertile land. It occurs when drylands become increasingly arid or desert-like. Below I will now go over a “Top 10” list of some of the most interesting and important facts relating to desertification, as well as some specific historical examples. – Huge drop in agricultural productivity via topsoil erosion leading to the abandonment/scaling-back of agriculture there (500-1500 AD). Desertification can be characterized by the droughts and arid conditions the landscape endures as a result of human exploitation of fragile ecosystems. Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ Despite its evocative name, desertification isn’t the march of sand dunes through inhabited areas. Anthropogenic Desertification vs ‘Natural’ Climate Trends Anthropogenic Processes: The North-Central China Example While physical processes were responsible for the formation of China's deserts, human activities are believed to have contributed to their … The real push off the cliff, with regard to desertification, though, came after the Roman Empire collapsed. It usually takes place in arid, semi-arid and dry types of areas. Given the fact that many of the regions that will be hit hardest by desertification over the coming decades/century are heavily populated (especially by young males) — the Middle East, North Africa, and the Near East — the next century is likely to see significant “Völkerwanderung”. Very Severe desertification: The synthesis and development of many grooves and valleys and the salinization of the soil, causing soil degradation, happens at this type of desertification, the composition of active naked large sand dunes. Feel free to take a look back at the history of the last 8000 or so years for a glimpse of that reality — the smoking, shredded ruins of civilizations, cultures, value systems, and ethnic identities, are the fertile and chaotic environments where different ways of organizing and experiencing the world begin to emerge and are tested in the very harsh environments of the times. Agree totally with the two above comments. The farmers who can rotate crops, plant cover crops, let land lie fallow, and use grazing strategically, More than a century of rainfall data in the Sahel show an unusually wet period from 1950 until 1970 (positive index values), followed by extremely dry years from 1970 to 1990 (negative index values). Desertification – Description, Causes, and Impacts (Essay) The term desertification is, as a rule, explained as the land degradation process that leads to the reduction or loss of biological or economic productivity of the territory. The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed: Document from the year 2011 in the subject Agrarian Studies, University of Greenwich, language: English, abstract: It is widely recognised that environmental problems such as soil degradation (erosion and desertification) affects many ... The Convention itself was a response to a call at the UN Earth Summitin Rio de Janeiro in 1992 to hold negotiations for an international legal agreement on desertification. And had to be reintroduced from elsewhere long after it was forgotten in Britain. United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification. Find 3 ways to say DESERTIFICATION, along with antonyms, related words, and example sentences at Thesaurus.com, the world's most trusted free thesaurus. Researchers concluded that any permanent desertification was limited to localized areas. New ways are being sought to use surface-water resources such as rain water harvesting or irrigating with seasonal runoff from adjacent highlands. The most widely accepted of these was that of the Princeton University Dictionary which defined it as "the process of fertile land transforming into desert typically as a result of deforestation, drought or improper/inappropriate agriculture". Not banning grazing animals high up otherwise perpetuates the no trees high up situation, as the grazing animals eat all the shoots. For example, World Bank economists have been at the forefront in sounding the alarm about deforestation and environmental degradation in Africa. Mapping desertification in southern Africa. This places additional strain on already delicate (Graph adapted from Anyamba and Tucker, 2005. Deforestation rates started inching up in Brazil in 2013, a year that saw a 29 per cent rise in deforestation compared with 2012, according to IMAZON. Tell that its sculptor well those passions read In recent times, human behavior has been one of the main drivers of species extinction — primarily through the actions, and knock-on effects, of: deforestation, agricultural development, over-hunting, environmental degradation, desertification, and introduced diseases/species. Desertification. For example, more than half a million square kilometers on the southern edge of … This enormous deforestation has been the cause of an enormous number of species extinctions, the desertification of large tracts of lands, climatic changes, topsoil erosion, large-scale flooding events, famine, disease epidemics/pandemics, and what you might as well call “insect plagues”, amongst other things. Many of these technologies, arts, and values, are gone forever after their loss — different cultures/civilizations have different fundamental values, what’s regarded as being of absolute/divine importance in one can be dismissed as meaningless in another; what’s the highest ideal in one can be the “evil” of another; etc. Other desertification solutions include rotational grazing of livestock, reforestation, and the planting of fast-growing trees to prevent shelter from the wind. Desertification involves many environmental and socio-economic aspects. After fifty years of farming, the farmer had to relocate to land with more fertile soil because of the desertification of his former plot of land. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InYKENDfZng#t=78 Most species are closely tied to their ecological niches, and to the wider environment that they live in. Lands lost to desert may effectively be lost for ever, so desertification is humanity's most obvious despoliation of the planet. It is certainly one of the most serious environmental problems facing the world today. Drylands comprise 41% of the earth’s land area and are home to roughly 2 billion ... For example, the 2004 global population growth rate was 1.14%, but in Africa, the rate was 2.4%. Stand in the desert. This is common in Africa where most of the terrain is a desert. Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare How to use desertification in a sentence. Another very interesting — but much more recent — example of desertification, is that of the Horqin Sandy Land in Zhalute Banner, Inner Mongolia of China. Either displacing the people living in the still productive lands, eliminating them, and/or being eliminated themselves. Found inside – Page 527Indicators can be better used for defining land desertification risk if they are classified according to the land use type . For example important indicators for defining desertification risk for vineyards are related to land management ... Desertification is not natural expansion of deserts. The vegetation index shows green pushing back into the Sahel, responding to the rainfall patterns. Found inside – Page xThe second gives an overview of the socioeconomic problems causing present day desertification and offers proposals for ... The section closes by describing the work on domestication of Jatropha in Mali, an outstanding example of ... xx. (Graph adapted from Mitchell, 2005. How to use desertification in a sentence. January 5, 2015 in Animals & Insects, Geology & Climate, Humans, Plants. And of its goodness a strong proof is this: what is now left of our soil rivals any other in being all-productive and abundant in crops and rich in pasturage for all kinds of cattle; and at that period, in addition to their fine quality, it produced these things in vast quantity . The vegetation index mirrors these patterns of rainfall in the mid-1980s, and it also mirrors a partial recovery in 1994. I wonder if it is quite that easy to reverse desertification. don’t have a mortgage to pay. Between 1988 and 1997, the sandy land area increased by 12.5%, nearly 2.4 times in the farming section. Generally such periods see the disintegration of cultural values, complex economic systems, technological systems, complicated urban infrastructure, ethnic identities, and often of writing systems and languages as well. Sahel is a region spreading across the continent of Africa from Indian Ocean on the east to Atlantic Ocean on the West. This is caused, and acts in concert with, a number of other factors — including drought, overgrazing, deforestation, common agricultural practices, and changes in the climate. The fall of the Harappan civilization is thought to have come (based on extensive archaeological research on the subject), via a couple of centuries of slow degradation via the processes of decreasing soil fertility, a changing climate, agricultural failure, the resulting wars/social turmoil that reliably follows food shortages (think “Arab Spring”), desertification, deforestation, resource shortages, and increasing rates of disease/decreasing sanitation. Found inside – Page 135At Akron, an example of above-average precipitation showed that only minor moisture gain occurred during this late-summer period. We conclude that we have to look for a means to reduce evaporation losses during the second half of the ... thesaurus. It is described in sveral youtube videos. Eventually the land collapses completely and turns to what is more or less desert — able only to support population sizes considerably lower than those that were there before. It must be possible to reverse the process, but I suspect it would be a long term project and require a lot of resources. Ad-free experience & advanced Chrome extension. Given that the whole region’s infrastructure was so thoroughly destroyed, the Romans established the province’s new capital at the city of Utica. “Salinization,” which refers to the buildup of salt deposits through irrigation and evaporation, is an example of desertification. While plants are not growing on the land, the land may not necessarily be desertified. Found insideRates and Extent Rates of desertification indicate the speed at which dryland degradation occurs. ... For example, the severity of soil erosion and its impact on associated resources in the United States has been debated because of ... Underwood, J.A. It is really the matter of what was said in the article above: the poorer the people the more the people are believe they are forced to destroy whatever resources they have to find food for survival. Desertification does not occur in linear, easily mappable patterns. As recently as 2005, considerable controversy existed over the proper definition of the term "desertification." Being mostly caused by humans, the effects of desertification can only be prevented and reversed by humans. Lamoreux, W.W.Wettengel, P. Hedao, and K.R. Much of the food that Romans ate during this time was actually imported from this region owing to its great agricultural productivity as compared to the depleted Roman soils of the time. desertification meaning: 1. the process by which land changes into desert, for example because there has been too much…. Late-Bronze Age Collapse (Mycenaean Palatial Civilization Collapse, Bili Apes — Giant Lion-Eating Chimp (Chimpanzee) Subspecies, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yPjoh9YJMk&ebc=ANyPxKoQrBJkUjzJHdOX2gIgIYJz0hxawFS5o0NRXXwAA_MEo02BX3CkI3OVPflltd3MhV2StBOpB2v-jLm3AK7K_CFLTl3nVg, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InYKENDfZng#t=78, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK8JNXHcBMA&feature=youtu.be, Ocean Acidification Causes, Effects, & Examples: Top 10 List, Ocean Acidification Effects, Causes, & Examples List Part 2, Ancient Seafaring — Neanderthals Sailing The Mediterranean 100,000 Years Ago; Prehistoric Travel & Cross-Continent Exchange; & The Reality Of Archaeological Evidence As Compared To Pop Culture Assumptions, Antarctica & Climate Change, What Would A Greened Antarctica Look Like? As it stands, the most widely accepted definition is probably the one that’s now printed in the Princeton University Dictionary — which defines it this way: “The process of fertile land transforming into desert typically as a result of deforestation, drought, or improper/inappropriate agriculture”. The process by which fertile land becomes desert, typically as a result of drought, deforestation, or inappropriate agriculture. Desertification definition, the processes by which an area becomes a desert. Thank you, Sten, for these great links. During the dust bowl period, millions of people were forced to abandon their farms and livelihoods. For example, improper cropping and irrigation practices have led to desertification in areas of Uzbekistan, where cotton is a major export. Done right it can be easily be more for both sides, so easy! A country´s wealth is built up slowly over a century, but it can be demolished in less than a decade. Desertification may be defined as the land degradation in arid,semi-arid regions arising due to multiple factors including climatic conditions and... “Dark ages” are referred to thusly as a result of the fact that there are few written records from such time periods. Most importantly for understanding desertification, lay the years side-by-side with rainfall data, and you see where plant growth is changing over the long term—where productive land is becoming desert, and where it is not. Well-managed lands can recover from drought when the rains return. Here link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yPjoh9YJMk&ebc=ANyPxKoQrBJkUjzJHdOX2gIgIYJz0hxawFS5o0NRXXwAA_MEo02BX3CkI3OVPflltd3MhV2StBOpB2v-jLm3AK7K_CFLTl3nVg, A segment of the Loess Plateu in China with several million inhabitants was recovered from relentless erosion in the last 15 years, by means of banning goat over-grazing, re-planting trees to capture and buffer rain waters on the highest elevatations (fish scale planting structure) and re-terracing the slopes. The vegetation index over desertified land would remain low, even after rain. In 2006, Goddard’s Global Inventory Modeling and Mapping Studies (GIMMS) group, led by Tucker, released a twenty-four-year-long data set, the longest satellite-based vegetation record available. It is a Semi-Arid region south of Sahara Desert. Interestingly, recent research has shown that the removal/extinction of large herds of migrating wildlife has also played a part in the destruction of vegetation and soil fertility — that without the activities of these large herds that desertification accelerates. Strand, J.C. Morrison, C.J. Found insideTwosimple examples of agricultural drought maybe given: Example 1.Good rainfall in the 1950's and early 1960'sin Africa ledtoan increase of the human and especially animal population with an extension of the grazing land towardthe north ... The coefficient of variation (CV) and climate departure index (Z) were calculated to examine the fluctuations and trends of interannual variations of temperature and precipitation; TM remote sensing data was extracted to obtain the sandy land area; linear regression analysis was used to analyze climate changes and the socio-economic evolution over the years, and it was also used to standardize the variables, which included annual temperature, annual precipitation, human population, and livestock number, in order to measure the difference in the rate of change between climate and anthropogenic factors. More than 30 percent of North America is comprised of arid or semi-arid lands, with about 40 percent of the continental United States at risk for desertification [source: U.N. ]. Ozymandias — By Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822), I met a traveller from an antique land So, in other words, bad outcomes no matter what course of action is taken. Near them, on the sand, These migrations often result in large urban slums that are home to significant numbers of the unemployed. Desertification is the permanent decrease in biological productivity of dryland ar-eas. But there is hope springing from recent activities: Soil organic matter can and have been increases from often typical 1.6% to over 5% with concurrent increase of harvests.One example is Gabe Brown in North Dakota that has done it on his 5,000 acre farm. Famine and poverty/starvation invariably seem to follow desertification, but what may be a less obvious truth than that is that famine and poverty are often drivers of desertification them-self — often being locked together in a downward spiral. 2006. and summary of same: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK8JNXHcBMA&feature=youtu.be. Effects include land degradation, soil erosion and sterility, and a loss of biodiversity, with huge economic costs for nations where deserts are growing. reforestation. For example, UNCOD estimates that moderate desertification can lead to … example, the soils have been contaminated by toxic chemicals or water bodies have become eutrophic. “There is no extensive desertification,” Prince agrees. With the loss of their environment, most simply disappear — or, at the least, see a huge drop in their genetic diversity. Grass Dew . examples. Human causes of desertification include overgrazing, the buildup of salt in irrigated soils, and topsoil erosion. There’s actually currently something of a debate over the use of the term though. Oases and farmlands in windy regions can be protected by planting tree fences or grass belts. Round the decay Overgrazing is the major cause of desertification worldwide. Other factors that cause desertification include urbanization, climate change, overdrafting of groundwater, deforestation, natural disasters and tillage practices in agriculture that place soils more vulnerable to wind. First Published in 1983. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company. For example, many of the policies for combating desertification tried in the Sahel during the 1970s and 1980s failed because they did not involve local land managers (C22.3.2, R2.4.3). Nicholson, S. (2000). And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Prince, S., Brown de Colstoun, E., and Kravitz, L. (1998). Additional savannas, grasslands, and woodlands are common indications of desertification in arid and semi-arid areas. Antonyms for Desertification (opposite of Desertification). Desertification is the persistent degradation of dry land ecosystems by human activities and by climate change. The changing contexts of the desertification debate. Helmut Geist (2005) identified more than 100 formal definitions. The island — which covers about 160,000 hectares — has been under human influence for at least 4000-3500 years. Nothing beside remains. 8. By pounding the soil with their hooves, livestock compact the substrate, increase the proportion of fine material, and reduce the percolation rate of the soil, thus encouraging erosion by wind and water. To put it simply, when the land/soil/environment degrades, when the prey/domesticated animals die off, when agricultural yields drop, when water becomes scarce — people die. The area is an example of desertification, and no further growth of any type may arise for generations. Although desertification occurs in all regions, it has high concentrations in developing countries, especially in Africa. If ever there were an example to show how fast human expansion and behavior can thoroughly destroy an environment’s live-ability, this is certainly close to it. For example, the land could be degraded by overuse, but it could also be rocky with thin soils. Around half of this land gets reforested to a degree — but, as stated before, these new forests are almost invariably a shadow of their former selves, and don’t offer the same degree of natural services (water purification, oxygen production, food production, etc). An interesting example of the process is the Greek island of Lesvos. If the land is desertified, growth will no longer follow the rains. The eruption and its aftermath (fires, tsunami, weather changes and famines) would have had wide-ranging effects across the Mediterranean, the Levant and particularly Greece, and could have provided the impetus for invasions of other regions of the Mediterranean.”. [Photographs copyright Nick Brooks (upper) and Ewan Robinson (lower).]. Rainfall tapered off in the Sahel in the early 1970s, and by 1972, the region was in the grip of a drought that would kill millions. Desertification - Webpage 2. Which, itself, predictably leads to social problems. Agree, The government itself is the problem. Desertification definition is - the process of becoming desert (as from land mismanagement or climate change). “Desertification” is the name given to the process by which previously fertile agricultural lands are made infertile made by human practices. After discovering this website and reading about Desertification, I thought What If land could be reforested and made productive again? A good example of this process is the loss of the pottery wheel in post-Roman Britain. We have indeed responded in both ways you outline above – acceptance (which often leads to collapse via the over-stressing of established infrastructure and systems) as seen in Sweden , or the closing off of borders (which almost invariably leads to war, insurgencies, and persistent endemic irregular warfare) as seen in Croatia, Serbia, Hungary and others. . “But if it starts to rain and vegetation returns, what do you call it?” Is the land still desertified? It is a global phenomenon that can be corroborated in the following examples. Desertification is defined as a process of land degradation in arid, semi-arid and sub-humid areas due to various factors including climatic variat...
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