After the devastating dust storms that swept across Northern China in 2000, there was much interest in examining and analyzing experiences with dust storm mitigation, prevention, forecasting and control. There was a need to document the nature, extent, causal factors associated with the severe sand and dust storms experienced in China itself and which threatened the lives and livelihoods of millions of people. Due to the long-range transport of sediments impacting the neighbouring countries, especially those downwind of the source, there was much interest in getting international cooperation so that the collective wisdom of experts from many countries could be distilled in this monograph.
What emerged from the writings collected here was that desertification - land degradation in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas resulting from various factors, including climatic variations and human activities, is the result of processes that are complex and variable. Desertification is characterized by a cycle of natural and socio-economic causes and effects.