Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Processes
- 2 Regional seismic shaking hazards in mountains
- 3 Volcanic hazards and risks: a geomorphological perspective
- 4 Mountain hazards
- 5 Review and future challenges in snow avalanche risk analysis
- 6 Landslide hazards
- 7 Catastrophic landslides and sedimentary budgets
- 8 Landslides and climatic change
- 9 The hazardousness of high-magnitude floods
- 10 Flood hazards: the context of fluvial geomorphology
- 11 Geomorphology and coastal hazards
- 12 Weathering hazards
- 13 Hazards associated with karst
- 14 Soil erosion
- 15 Desertification and land degradation in arid and semi-arid regions
- 16 Dune migration and encroachment
- Part II Processes and applications of geomorphology to risk assessment and management
- Index
- References
15 - Desertification and land degradation in arid and semi-arid regions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 January 2011
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Processes
- 2 Regional seismic shaking hazards in mountains
- 3 Volcanic hazards and risks: a geomorphological perspective
- 4 Mountain hazards
- 5 Review and future challenges in snow avalanche risk analysis
- 6 Landslide hazards
- 7 Catastrophic landslides and sedimentary budgets
- 8 Landslides and climatic change
- 9 The hazardousness of high-magnitude floods
- 10 Flood hazards: the context of fluvial geomorphology
- 11 Geomorphology and coastal hazards
- 12 Weathering hazards
- 13 Hazards associated with karst
- 14 Soil erosion
- 15 Desertification and land degradation in arid and semi-arid regions
- 16 Dune migration and encroachment
- Part II Processes and applications of geomorphology to risk assessment and management
- Index
- References
Summary
Introduction
Land degradation occurring in particular climate zones, i.e. arid, semi-arid, and dry sub-humid areas, is defined as desertification by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD, 1999). As desertification is widely viewed as one of the leading environmental issues facing the world today, many individual researchers and international organizations have tried to clarify and to update the definition of this term. Among various conceptions, the ones from the United Nations Authority have been most often used. The earlier definition adopted by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP, 1990) was practically the same as the one given by Conacher and Conacher (2000), limiting the cause of degradation to human activities. At the UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, both climatic variations and human activities were accepted as factors triggering desertification (Williams and Balling, 1995).
Independent of the exact causes of desertification in each individual case, desertification is a distinct geomorphological hazard due to its impacts on landforms and on geomorphological processes. Among various geomorphological hazards, desertification has been given probably the greatest attention by the United Nations. In 1994 the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) was adopted. In 1996 the agreement legally entered into force following its 50th ratification. The year 2006, the 10th anniversary since the UNCCD came into effect, was declared by the United Nations as the International Year of Deserts and Desertification.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Geomorphological Hazards and Disaster Prevention , pp. 189 - 198Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010
References
(1991). Land Degradation: Development and Breakdown of Terrestrial Environments. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
(1910). The sand dunes of the Libyan Desert. Geographical Journal, 35, 379–395.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , et al. (2006). Archaeology and climate: settlement and lake-level changes at the Aral Sea. Geoarchaeology: An International Journal, 21, 721–734.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , and (2007). Timing of lake-level changes in Etosha Pan, Namibia, since the middle Holocene from OSL ages of relict shorelines in the Okondeka region. Quaternary International, 175, 29–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and (2000). Policy responses to land degradation in Australia. In (ed.), Land Degradation. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 363–385.Google Scholar
and (2006). UN year of deserts and desertification: policy implications. Quaternary Sciences (in Chinese), 26, 1030.
(2002). Land degradation in the drylands. Arid Land Research and Management, 16, 99–132.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , , and (2001). Estimate of total CO2 output from desertified sandy land in China. Atmospheric Environment, 35, 5915–5921.Google Scholar
, and (2005). Field evidence for surface-wave-induced instability of sand dunes. Nature, 437, 720–723.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
(2004). The Geomorphology of Egypt, Landforms and Evolution, vol. 1, The Nile Valley and the Western Desert. Cairo: The Egyptian Geographical Society.Google Scholar
, , et al. (2004). The Aral Sea disaster: human biomonitoring of Hg, As, HCB, DDE, and PCBs in children living in Aralsk and Akchi, Kazakhstan. International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health, 207, 541–547.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
, and (2002). The carbon cycle of sandy lands in China and its global significance. Climatic Change, 48, 535–549.Google Scholar
(2002). Great Warm Deserts of the World: Landscapes and Evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
(2008). Dust storms: recent developments. Journal of Environmental Management, 90, 89–94.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
and (1988). Impacts of moisture on the threshold wind velocity of sand movement (in Chinese). Journal of Desert Research, 8, 8–27.Google Scholar
and (2008). Regional desertification: a global synthesis. Global and Planetary Change. doi: 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2008.10.006.CrossRef
(1973). The changes of the Maowusu Desert, from the perspective of the ruined cities along the Hongliu River (in Chinese). Cultural Relics, 1, 35–41.Google Scholar
and (1989). Reclamation of saline soils using calcium sulphate from titanium industry. Ambio, 18, 124–127.Google Scholar
(1999). Aridity: Droughts and Human Development. Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(1990). Desertifikation: ein weltweites Problem der ökologischen Verwüstung in den Trockengebieten der Erde. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.Google Scholar
, , , and (2000). Exposure to airborne dust contaminated with pesticide in the Aral Sea region. Lancet, 355, 627–628.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
, and (2004). A record of fluvial aggradation in the northern Namib Desert during the Late Quaternary. Zeitschrift für Geomorphologie, Suppl.-Vol., 133, 1–18.Google Scholar
(1990). Soil salinity: causes and controls. In (ed.), Techniques for Desert Reclamation. Chichester: Wiley, pp. 109–134.Google Scholar
and (2001). On-site and off-site effects of wind erosion on European light soils. Land Degradation and Development, 12, 1–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(2007). The assessment of global trends in land degradation. In and (eds.), Climate and Land Degradation. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, pp. 1–38.Google Scholar
(1978). Sand deserts during glacial maximum and climatic optimum. Nature, 272, 43–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(2001). Landschafts(zer)störung: Ursachen, Prozesse, Produkte, Definition und Perspektiven. Geo-Öko, 22, 91–102.Google Scholar
, , and (2004). Wind erosion research in China: past, present and future. Progress in Physical Geography, 28, 366–386.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(1997). Outlines of the results from the archaeological excavations in the reaches of the Keriya River, Xinjiang (in Chinese). Xinjiang Antiquities, 48, 1–12.Google Scholar
(2005). Chinese Desertification and Desertification Bulletin. Beijing: State Forestry Administration.Google Scholar
(1998). Study on Combating Desertification/Land Degradation in China. Beijing: China Environmental Science Press.Google Scholar
, , et al. (2003). Late Pleistocene wetting and drying in the NW Kalahari: an integrated study from the Tsodilo Hills, Botswana. Quaternary International, 104, 53–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and (2005). Remobilization of southern African desert dune systems by twenty-first century global warming. Nature, 435, 1218–1221.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
(2008). Arid geomorphology: recent progress from an Earth System Science perspective. Progress in Physical Geography, 32, 81–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(1999). United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification in those Countries Experiencing Serious Drought and/or Desertification, Particularly in Africa. Text with Annexes. Bonn: Secretariat of the Convention to Combat Desertification.Google Scholar
(1990). Report of the Ad-hoc Consultative Meeting on the Assessment of Desertification. Nairobi: United Nations Environment Programme.Google Scholar
(1990). World Map of the Status of Human Induced Soil Degradation. Wageningen: UNEP and ISRIC.Google Scholar
, , et al. (2007). Dating methods and geomorphic evidence of palaeo-environmental changes at the eastern margin of the South Peruvian coastal desert (14°30′ S) before and during the Little Ice Age. Quaternary International, 175, 3–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(1990). The control of blowing sand and mobile desert dunes. In (ed.), Techniques for Desert Reclamation. Chichester: Wiley, pp. 35–85.Google Scholar
, , and (1995). Dune mobility and vegetation cover in the southwest Kalahari Desert. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms, 20, 515–529.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and (1981). Field observations of the December (1977) wind storm, San Joaquin Valley, California. In (ed.), Desert Dust: Origins, Characteristics and Effects on Man. Boulder: Geological Society of America, pp. 233–251.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(1983). Meterorological Aspects of Certain Processes Affecting Soil Degradation. Geneva: WMO.Google Scholar
, and (1993). Soil wind erosion in farmland and its control in the middle part of Naiman Banner, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (in Chinese). Bulletin of Soil and Water Conservation, 7, 75–80.Google Scholar
(1991). Geomorphologische Untersuchungen in Trockenräumen NW-Chinas unter besonderer Berücksichtigung von Badanjilin und Takelamagan. Göttinger Geographische Abhandlungen, 96, 1–124.Google Scholar
and (2003). The ion chemistry of lakes and late Holocene desiccation in the Badain Jaran Desert, Inner Mongolia, China. Catena, 51, 45–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , , and (2004). The evolution of dry lands in northern China and in the Republic of Mongolia since the Last Glacial Maximum. Quaternary International, 118/119, 69–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and (2006a). The key role of water resources management in ecological restoration in western China. Geographical Research (Journal of the Institute of Australian Geographers), 44, 146–154.Google Scholar
, , , and (2006b). Hydrological changes and land degradation in the southern and eastern Tarim Basin, Xinjiang, China. Land Degradation and Development, 17, 381–392.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and (2006c). Late Quaternary environmental changes in the Taklamakan Desert, western China, inferred from OSL-dated lacustrine and aeolian deposits. Quaternary Science Reviews, 25, 923–932.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , , and (2007). Processes and mechanisms of desertification in northern China during the last 30 years, with a special reference to the Hunshandake Sandy Land, eastern Inner Mongolia. Catena, 71, 2–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , , et al. (2008). Late Quaternary environmental changes and organic carbon density in the Hunshandake Sandy Land, eastern Inner Mongolia, China. Global and Planetary Change, 61, 70–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , and (1989). Studies on Soil Erosion in Inner Mongolia (in Chinese). Beijing: Science Press.Google Scholar
, , et al. (1981). Study on the Geomorphology of Wind-drift Sands in the Taklamakan Desert (in Chinese). Beijing: Science Press.Google Scholar
- 1
- Cited by