Assessing the spatial-temporal pattern and evolution of areas sensitive to land desertification in North China

Xu, Duanyang; You, Xiaogang; Xia, Chunlin

doi:10.1016/j.ecolind.2018.10.005

Cited by 78 publications

(50 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…Numerous LDD assessment methodologies, indicators and indices have been developed in the last decades to describe the extent and severity of LDD as well as to support LDD abatement decisions at the global, national and local/regional level [77][78][79][80][81][82][83][84][85][86][87][88][89]. The Environmental Sensitivity Assessment (ESA) methodology [79], in particular, concerns the assessment of desertification risk on the basis of selected indicators of climate, soil, vegetation and land management at lower levels (landscape/watershed, regional, national).…”

Section: Problem Description and Analysis; Specification Of Planning mentioning

confidence: 99%

Combating Land Degradation and Desertification: The Land-Use Planning Quandary

Briassoulis

2019

Land

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Land-use planning (LUP), an instrument of land governance, is often employed to protect land and humans against natural and human-induced hazards, strengthen the resilience of land systems, and secure their sustainability. The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) underlines the critical role of appropriate local action to address the global threat of land degradation and desertification (LDD) and calls for the use of local and regional LUP to combat LDD and achieve land degradation neutrality. The paper explores the challenges of putting this call into practice. After presenting desertification and the pertinent institutional context, the paper examines whether and how LDD concerns enter the stages of the LUP process and the issues arising at each stage. LDD problem complexity, the prevailing mode of governance, and the planning style endorsed, combined with LDD awareness, knowledge and perception, value priorities, geographic particularities and historical circumstances, underlie the main challenges confronting LUP; namely, adequate representation of LDD at each stage of LUP, conflict resolution between LDD-related and development goals, need for cooperation, collaboration and coordination of numerous and diverse actors, sectors, institutions and policy domains from multiple spatial/organizational levels and uncertainty regarding present and future environmental and socio-economic change. In order to realize the integrative potential of LUP and foster its effectiveness in combating LDD at the local and regional levels, the provision of an enabling, higher-level institutional environment should be prioritized to support phrοnetic-strategic integrated LUP at lower levels, which future research should explore theoretically, methodologically and empirically.

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Section: Problem Description and Analysis; Specification Of Planning mentioning

confidence: 99%

Combating Land Degradation and Desertification: The Land-Use Planning Quandary

Briassoulis

2019

Land

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“…However, Chinese grasslands are under strong anthropogenic pressures due to the effects of climate change and intensive land use [16][17][18][19]. As a result, Chinese grasslands are subject to increasing desertification processes that are profoundly changing land-cover characteristics [20][21][22] with negative impacts on species communities. Due to their prominent role in grassland ecosystems, carabids constitute one of the most investigated animal groups in grassland ecology around the world [23][24][25][26][27][28].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Competing Vegetation Structure Indices for Estimating Spatial Constrains in Carabid Abundance Patterns in Chinese Grasslands Reveal Complex Scale and Habitat Patterns

Tsafack

Fattorini

Frías

et al. 2020

Insects

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Carabid communities are influenced by landscape features. Chinese steppes are subject to increasing desertification processes that are changing land-cover characteristics with negative impacts on insect communities. Despite those warnings, how land-cover characteristics influence carabid communities in steppe ecosystems remains unknown. The aim of this study is to investigate how landscape characteristics drive carabid abundance in different steppes (desert, typical, and meadow steppes) at different spatial scales. Carabid abundances were estimated using pitfall traps. Various landscape indices were derived from Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) images. Indices expressing moisture and productivity were, in general, those with the highest correlations. Different indices capture landscape aspects that influence carabid abundance at different scales, in which the patchiness of desert vegetation plays a major role. Carabid abundance correlations with landscape characteristics rely on the type of grassland, on the vegetation index, and on the scale considered. Proper scales and indices are steppe type-specific, highlighting the need of considering various scales and indices to explain species abundances from remotely sensed data.

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“…Differing from (apolitical) environmental studies by politicizing ecological problems, political ecology offers an interpretative platform to these dynamics, clarifying the intimate relationship of the environmental sphere with multiple political, demographic, cultural, institutional, economic, and social factors [114]. By integrating ecology with political economy, this discipline reframed topics such as soil degradation and farm marginalization, ecological conflicts, conservation, and control of land resources, as well as environmental identities and social movements [115]. Interviews, policy analysis, and statistical indicators are relevant tools providing the empirical knowledge to political ecology theories and assumptions [116].…”

Section: Political Ecologymentioning

confidence: 99%

From Historical Narratives to Circular Economy: De-Complexifying the “Desertification” Debate

Hälbac-Cotoară-Zamfir

Colantoni

Mosconi

et al. 2020

IJERPH

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Assuming the importance of a “socioeconomic mosaic” influencing soil and land degradation at the landscape scale, spatial contexts should be considered in the analysis of desertification risk as a base for the design of appropriate counteracting strategies. A holistic approach grounded on a multi-scale qualitative and quantitative assessment is required to identify optimal development strategies regulating the socioeconomic dimensions of land degradation. In the last few decades, the operational thinking at the base of a comprehensive, holistic theory of land degradation evolved toward many different conceptual steps. Moving from empirical, qualitative and unstructured frameworks to a more structured, rational and articulated thinking, such theoretical approaches have been usually oriented toward complex and non-linear dynamics benefiting from progressive and refined approximations. Based on these premises, eleven disciplinary approaches were identified and commented extensively on in the present study, and were classified along a gradient of increasing complexity, from more qualitative and de-structured frameworks to more articulated, non-linear thinking aimed at interpreting the intrinsic fragmentation and heterogeneity of environmental and socioeconomic processes underlying land degradation. Identifying, reviewing and classifying such approaches demonstrated that the evolution of global thinking in land degradation was intimately non-linear, developing narrative and deductive approaches together with inferential, experimentally oriented visions. Focusing specifically on advanced economies in the world, our review contributes to systematize multiple—sometimes entropic—interpretations of desertification processes into a more organized framework, giving value to methodological interplays and specific interpretations of the latent processes underlying land degradation.

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Assessing the spatial-temporal pattern and evolution of areas sensitive to land desertification in North China

Cited by 78 publications

References 41 publications

Combating Land Degradation and Desertification: The Land-Use Planning Quandary

Combating Land Degradation and Desertification: The Land-Use Planning Quandary

Competing Vegetation Structure Indices for Estimating Spatial Constrains in Carabid Abundance Patterns in Chinese Grasslands Reveal Complex Scale and Habitat Patterns

From Historical Narratives to Circular Economy: De-Complexifying the “Desertification” Debate

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