Comparison of different land degradation indicators: Do the world regions really matter?

Abstract

In 2010, the Convention on Biological Diversity created the Aichi Biodiversity targets to aid the restoration of degraded ecosystems, which include the restoration of at least 15% of degraded ecosystems by 2020. A crucial step to achieve this goal is the development of nonbiased prioritization methodologies that help establish key areas for restoration. However, prioritization methodologies depend heavily on each country's economic capability, governance, internal politics, degradation level, and access to data. Because only 78 countries are considered high‐income economies, only this select group of countries would potentially have the necessary resources to compile the information needed to carry out a prioritization process. In this work, our aim was to analyze and compare key land degradation indicators (e.g., land use/change, primary productivity, biodiversity loss, soil organic carbon, degradation level, and social acceptance) in five world regions, with different incomes and political and cultural background, Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, North America (USA–Canada), and Oceania. We also grouped these key land degradation indicators by type (ecological, social, cultural, economic, and policy). Our results indicate that the different world regions seem not to have a direct impact on the number of land degradation indicators used. However, we found differences in the type of indicators used per region, partially denoting the idiosyncrasy of each of these regions. Our study shows that governance is important in the use of indicators although we suspect that there are other variables that could be at play not included in this study.

Impact of coal mining on land use dynamics and soil quality: Assessment of land degradation vulnerability through conjunctive use of analytical hierarchy process and geospatial techniques

“…Degree of vulnerability depends on the quantum of disturbance guided by several environmental factors as affected by anthropogenic perturbations. Henceforth, the total ecosystem as whole should be considered as priority for restoration that include replenishment of soil, vegetation, water, air qualities, and improvement of landscape to ensure overall health of natural ecosystem (Morales & Zuleta, 2020). The very high and high vulnerability zones are given top priority from the perspectives of immediate eco‐restoration followed by moderately vulnerable zones.…”

Bioavailability and toxicity variation of benzo(a)pyrene in three soil–wheat systems: Indicators of soil quality

“…The background level of B(a)P usually fluctuates within 0.1–5 μg kg −1 in majority of mineral soils, and 15–20 μg kg −1 in some chernozems and peaty soils due to the increase in the concentration of organic chemicals and specific structure of soil microbial community (Sushkova et al, 2018). For the protection of soil environment, various types of soil‐environmental standards were issued in most of the countries and regions around the world, such as quality standards, screening levels, cleanup levels, investigation values, in the consideration of soil type, land use, soil depth or extraction methods (Morales & Zuleta, 2019; Teng & Zhou, 2018).…”

“…The background level of B(a)P usually fluctuates within 0.1-5 μg kg À1 in majority of mineral soils, and 15-20 μg kg À1 in some chernozems and peaty soils due to the increase in the concentration of organic chemicals and specific structure of soil microbial community (Sushkova et al, 2018). For the protection of soil environment, various types of soil-environmental standards were issued in most of the countries and regions around the world, such as quality standards, screening levels, cleanup levels, investigation values, in the consideration of soil type, land use, soil depth or extraction methods (Morales & Zuleta, 2019;Teng & Zhou, 2018 Note: (a) Qin, et al, 2013;(b) Yang, et al, 2017;(c) Sverdrup, et al, 2007;(d) Cheng, et al, 2014 factors associated with soil types and recent artificial contamination (spiked soils) at different orders of magnitude. Results showed that no significant difference (p > 0.05) was observed for the extracted concentrations by the HPCD and Tenax-TA extraction methods, but the results varied with soil types and spiked amounts.…”

Bioassessment of water quality of surface waters using diatom metrics

“…The advantage of using bioindicators is the integration of these organisms in the evaluated habitats (Lobo et al, 2016;Cozea et al, 2020). Also, they show universal behavior in different ecosystems, which is important for comparing pollution in different continents or ecosystems (Rott et al, 1999;Smol and Stoermer, 2010;Lange-Bertalot et al, 2017;Morales et al, 2020). Taxonomy and classification of bioindicator species must be carried out by specialist researchers, as a wrong classification makes all results wrong.…”