Land Use and Degradation in a Desert Margin: The Northern Negev

Abstract

Degradation in a range of land uses was examined across the transition from the arid to the semi-arid zone in the northern Negev desert, representative of developments in land use taking place throughout the West Asia and North Africa region. Primary production was used as an index of an important aspect of dryland degradation. It was derived from data provided by Landsat measurements at 0.1 ha resolution over a 2500 km2 study region—the first assessment of the degradation of a large area of a desert margin at a resolution suitable for interpretation in terms of human activities. The Local NPP Scaling (LNS) method enabled comparisons between the observed NPP and the potential, nondegraded, reference NPP. The potential was calculated by normalizing the actual NPP to remove the effects of environmental conditions that are not related to anthropogenic degradation. Of the entire study area, about 50% was found to have a significantly lower production than its potential. The degree of degradation ranged from small in pasture, around informal settlements, minimally managed dryland cropping, and a pine plantation, to high in commercial cropping and extreme in low-density afforestation. This result was unexpected as degradation in drylands is often attributed to pastoralism, and afforestation is said to offer remediation and prevention of further damage.

Decision Support Systems in Forestry and Tree-Planting Practices and the Prioritization of Ecosystem Services: A Review

“…The importance of planting trees for climate change adaptation and mitigation is increasing, as forests act as carbon sinks [2,3]. This is particularly true in areas with desertification and complex environmental problems that require robust processes that allow the ever-growing human population to benefit from the environment's ecosystem services [4,5]. Furthermore, in many cases, ecosystem services cannot be easily quantified in monetary terms, are taken for granted, and often involve moral and ethical principles [6].…”