All publications and documents

This paper describes a manual-style Decision Support System that integrates land degradation indicators with adaptive management options and is designed for land managers to easily collect data and monitor progress towards environmental sustainability goals. A number of similar tools have been developed for ranchers in southern Africa, but there has been little help for land managers under common…

Multi-scale quantitative assessment of the relative role that climate change and human activities play in desertification is an important approach to clarifying the causes of desertification. In this study, a quantitative method was developed to assess the relative roles of climate change and human activities in desertification by selecting NPP as an indicator. The potential NPP and the…

Desertification, the conversion of arid grasslands to shrublands due to overgrazing and drought, is occurring on over a quarter of the land on earth. Conceptual models of desertification predict desertified shrublands are in a stable state, and grass recovery is unlikely. These models hypothesize that as grass is lost, feedback loops involving low soil nutrients or insufficient water infiltration…

Stipa tenacissima L., which has long been recognised as the typical dominant perennial plant in the North-African arid rangelands is currently going into extinction in the steppic High Plains of Algeria. The vegetation and soil dynamics were analyzed at an initially dense stand. The trend between 1976 and 2006 was investigated using five reference years. Sampling was performed along a grazing…

In many parts of the world the boundaries between grassland and shrubland biomes have changed substantially over the course of the last century. Many are projected to shift further from being grass-dominated to shrub-dominated by 2050 under global climate change and land use change projections. This paper used long-term surveys and repeat photography to assess vegetation change at the shrubland…

Changes in organic carbon after deforestation in Sahelian soils in Senegal were simulated both retrospectively and prospectively with the RothC model. Retrospective simulation modeling allowed us to recreate organic carbon dynamics during the exploitation period of a cropping system from 1991 to 2009. Beginning with an initial carbon stock equal to that measured in the undisturbed forest (14.8t C…