1.2 Known causes of desertification Along with climate change, there are a range of other factors that have been identified as major causes of desertification. We need to correct an image of desertification as an unstoppable monster slowly consuming the world’s fertile lands, plants, livestock and people. 2009). %���� Desertification - Desertification - Rain-fed croplands: Drylands also support rain-fed crops. Human activity can directly trigger desertification such as over farming, excessive irrigation, deforestation, and erosion. Such declines may be the result of climate change, deforestation, overgrazing, poverty, political instability, unsustainable irrigation practices, or combinations of these factors. Despite an increasingly sophisticated understanding of dryland environments and societies, the uses now being made of the desertification concept in parts of Asia exhibit many of the shortcomings of earlier work done in Africa. For instance, one of the main causes of desertifica- tion is unsustainable agricultural practices. This process can occur as a result of the natural factors or human activities. Population levels of the vulnerable drylands have a close relationship with development pressure on land by human activities which are one of the principal causes of desertification. Considerable debate surrounds the speed, nature, and causes of desertification, but it undoubtedly has a series of health implications. Land, and assessment of land degradation and deserti. Desertification is taking place much faster worldwide than historically and usually arises from the demands of increased populations that settle on the land in order to grow crops and graze animals. The meeting provided a forum for twenty-six scientists from Central Asia and NATO countries to discuss the human dimensions of the desertifi- tion process. The first is a spatially explicit measure of the impact of human consumption or 'demand' on ecosystem services as measured by the human appropriation of net primary productivity (HANPP) derived from population distributions and aggregate national statistics. One estimate of the direct causes of degradation allocates, for instance, the responsibility to overgrazing (35%), deforestation (30%), other agricultural activities global environmental change. Recent findings indicate that the long-term trend of the aridity index (AI) is mainly attributable to increased greenhouse gas emissions while anthropogenic aerosols exert small effects but alter its attributions. The meeting was co-directed by Roy Behnke of the Macaulay Institute, UK, and by Lapas Alibekov of the Samarkand State University, Uzbekistan. Land affected by desertification cannot sustain agricultural activities and is linked to the loss of biodiversity. #1 Vegetation is damaged or destroyed. When this grass is exploited by livestock, the soil loses its support and blows away with the wind. UN convention to, Towards a global drylands observing system: observa-, tional requirements and institutional solutions. The largest warming during the last 100 years was observed over drylands and accounted for more than half of the continental warming. J Arid Environ 120:4. Moreover, the quality of vegetation growth per unit area was increasing as well. described in qualitative terms as very small, slight, tional issues important to the assessment of desert-, conditions, the reversibility of changes, indicators, and variables, and data quality. Desertification is caused by a combination of social, political, economic, and natural factors which vary from region to region. Policies that can lead to an unsustainable use of resources and lack of infrastructures are major contributors to land degradation. The latest Assessment Report (AR5) from, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, present century, the global temperature could, ration and more water to be retained in the atmo-, frequently experience climate extremes and, drought, and climate changes are only expected, to increase the frequency of or exacerbate such, conditions, thereby increasing problems of water, tion could be aggravated around the world, because of climate variability, increased fre-, quency of drought, and continued population, growth, which would lead to an increased demand, for agricultural and livestock production, natural, the projections carried out by Huang et al.