Soil–Water Conservation and Desertification Control

Dear Colleagues,

Desertification is defined as land degradation occurring in the global drylands. It is one of the global problems targeted under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 15). The United Nations, through its Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), claims that 12 million hectares of land are lost annually through desertification and drought, which is equivalent to a loss of 20 million tons of grain production. Additionally, the International Fund for Agricultural Development claims that: “The livelihoods of over 1.2 billion people inhabiting dryland areas in 110 countries are currently threatened by drought and desertification”.

Desertification control reflects the underlying ecological processes, including biotic interactions, seed dispersal, vegetation succession, and environmental change. Soil and vegetation are key components in the Earth system. In spite of this, abusive exploitation (e.g., overgrazing, intensive agriculture on fragile and coarse-textured soils) of these renewable natural resources has led to a lack of soil cover with vegetation, and subsequent soil and water losses from various types of ecosystems to a worldwide scale. As a result, large surface areas in the world have been transformed into deserts because of their exploitation rather than a sustainable utilization. Degradation of some ecosystems leading to desertification presents a global environmental challenge. Therefore, appropriate measures of combat desertification are critical to preventing degradation, and desertification, of the renewable natural resources (i.e., soil, vegetation, water resources).

You may choose our Joint Special Issue in International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.

Dr. Yongcui Wang
Guest Editor

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• vegetation recovery
• soil erosion
• disturbance
• plant biodiversity
• soil seed bank
• bud bank