Assessing the effectiveness of sustainable land management policies for combating desertification: A data mining approach

Abstract

This study investigates the relationship between fine resolution, local-scale biophysical and socioeconomic contexts within which land degradation occurs, and the human responses to it. The research draws on experimental data collected under different territorial and socioeconomic conditions at 586 field sites in five Mediterranean countries (Spain, Greece, Turkey, Tunisia and Morocco). We assess the level of desertification risk under various land management practices (terracing, grazing control, prevention of wildland fires, soil erosion control measures, soil water conservation measures, sustainable farming practices, land protection measures and financial subsidies) taken as possible responses to land degradation. A data mining approach, incorporating principal component analysis, non-parametric correlations, multiple regression and canonical analysis, was developed to identify the spatial relationship between land management conditions, the socioeconomic and environmental context (described using 40 biophysical and socioeconomic indicators) and desertification risk. Our analysis identified a number of distinct relationships between the level of desertification experienced and the underlying socioeconomic context, suggesting that the effectiveness of responses to land degradation is strictly dependent on the local biophysical and socioeconomic context. Assessing the latent relationship between land management practices and the biophysical/socioeconomic attributes characterizing areas exposed to different levels of desertification risk proved to be an indirect measure of the effectiveness of field actions contrasting land degradation.

Satellite Monitoring of Natural Reforestation Efforts in China's Drylands

“…In addition, our analysis started when airplane planting was already being phased out by most provinces. Airplane planting is the planting strategy with the lowest level of community engagement, 65 usually leading to a low rate of germination and survival. 38,66 This is in part the reason for the failure of the early phases of the TNSP that relied more heavily on airplane planting.…”

Desertification risk fuels spatial polarization in ‘affected’ and ‘unaffected’ landscapes in Italy

“…Climate quality has been analysed by considering three variables: average annual rainfall rate, aridity index, and aspect 47 computed by using data from the Agro-meteorological Database of the Italian Ministry of Agriculture (including nearly 3,000 weather stations providing daily records since 1951; technical details available in 46 . For the soil dimension, considered as a quasi-static factor due to its very slow changes over time 48 , we extracted the required information to generate the standard ESA elementary layers (depth, texture, slope, and parent material) from the European Soil Database (Joint Research Centre, JRC) at 1 km 2 pixel resolution 8 and from other ancillary sources: (a) the Italian ‘Map of the water capacity in agricultural soils’ (Italian Ministry of Agriculture, see 46 ,(b the Ecopedological and Geological maps of Italy (realized by JRC and the Italian Geological Service), and (c) a land system map produced by the National Centre of Soil Cartography (Florence, Italy).…”

Application of the Socio-Ecological System Framework to Forest Fire Risk Management: A Systematic Literature Review

“…Many of the studies for which the authors chose a mainly quantitative approach are based on the statistical analysis of the patterns of different types of variables, aiming at linking wildfire events or related environmental dynamics with natural and socio-economic characteristics. Most of the studies with this type of approach are linked to a group of Italian researchers who applied it to the Mediterranean environment [37,[61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68]. Wildfires are a vital natural dynamic of a maquis biome and an emerging issue in other areas of Mediterranean countries, such as alpine regions.…”

“…Further attributable to the Statistical Approach category is the study conducted by Salvati et al [66] regarding desertification in Mediterranean countries. As mentioned before, fire risk is not always the primary focus of the research, but it is considered a key factor in all the selected studies.…”