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Lennart Olsson, LUCSUS

Lennart Olsson

Professor, Docent

Lennart Olsson, LUCSUS

Proxy global assessment of land degradation

Author

  • Z. G. Bai
  • D. L. Dent
  • Lennart Olsson
  • M. E. Schaepman

Summary, in English

Land degradation is always With Lis but its causes, extent and severity are contested. We define land degradation as a long-term decline in ecosystem function and productivity, Which may be assessed using lone-term, remotely sensed normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) data. Deviation from the norm may serve as a proxy assessment of land degradation and improvement - if other factors that may be responsible are taken into account. These other factors include rainfall effects which may be assessed by rain-use efficiency, calculated from NDVI and rainfall. Results from the analysis of the 23-year Global Inventory Modeling and Mapping Studies (GIMMS) NDVI data indicate declining rain-use efficiency-adjusted NDVI on ca. 24% of the global land area with degrading areas mainly in Africa south of the equator, South-East Asia and south China, north-central Australia, the Pampas and swaths of the Siberian and north American taiga; 1.5 billion people live in these areas. The results are very different from previous assessments which compounded what is happening now with historical land degradation. Economic appraisal can be undertaken when land degradation is expressed in terms of net primary productivity and the resultant data allow statistical comparison With other variables to reveal possible drivers.

Department/s

  • LUCSUS (Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies)

Publishing year

2008

Language

English

Pages

223-234

Publication/Series

Soil Use and Management

Volume

24

Issue

3

Document type

Journal article review

Publisher

Wiley-Blackwell

Topic

  • Social Sciences Interdisciplinary

Keywords

  • productivity
  • net primary
  • land degradation
  • normalized difference vegetation index
  • rain-use efficiency
  • global relationships

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0266-0032